Recent comments by ShadowInventory
Our House...
Is a very, very, very fine house...
With 2 cats in the yard...
2 trillion Euros should extend the pretense for a little while anyway....
As always in such times people are doing fine – until one day, suddenly, they're not, any more. Then there's no shortage of stories.
The decline in vacancy rate is probably caused by whole buildings being mothballed...
Just think how you would feel if you really were all in...
Maybe it was someone else who said they were all in the other day. Sorry - didnt mean to cast doubt on you...
During the campaign, Obama said he was going to go over the budget line by line and get rid of things that were not productive etc... If he would just do that, or call for zero based budgeting, perhaps there would be some light in the tunnel...
I expected the collective intelligence of the commentariat to have produced a workable solution to the global economic problems by now. Perhaps I need to lurk a lot longer...
Whether you are rich or poor, it's always good to have a lot of cash.
If we evolve into a 3 party system, then perhaps gridlock will reign supreme, which might be the best possible outcome...
Do the Greeks still get to retire at age 50? Or 55? whatever...
One of the biggest hurdles to successful investing is being able to buy or sell at the proper time. When the market is down hard, most people will be in fear that it will go even lower, and thus miss the buying opportunity. The reverse is true at the top - fear of missing out on more profits. This is why an asset allocation strategy works better for most people, if they will in fact follow the strategy and not wimp out at the turning points. Suppose you adopt a strategy of 35% bonds, 55% stocks, and 10% cash... and rebalance whenever one of the 3 reaches a point where it is 3% out of balance. This forces you to sell high and buy low, but does not guarantee that you will hit the exact turning points. Also this does not protect you from everything going down at the same time. You could also stay long, but buy an index put to cover your portfolio if the market does go down... This used to be called portfolio insurance. This simple strategy is easy to follow and appropriate for the average working person who makes enough money to save and invest on a regular basis. You could use VTI for stocks, BND for bonds, and VMMXX for cash... save all the fees and overhead of paying for investment management and advice too, and come out way ahead.
It would be better to take the bitter medicine today, and reduce the size of government. No matter what, there will be a period where subsidies are cut and the private sector has not yet responded to take up the slack. The unemployed must also change their attitude towards work, and treat any job as a valuable asset.
Solve the pension funding shortage in one shot - Distribute the principal to the beneficiaries along with a letter that they are getting a lump sum distribution and they are on their own... then close the pension plans down permanently... Current workers had better start saving...
This whole situation with budget cutting and unemployment feels like - You know you will feel better when you get done vomiting, but you are trying not to...
Meanwhile, the Shadow Bunker is still not listed for sale, but is fully stocked for the apocalypse...
Rajesh wrote:
invade Greece
The Romans could do it - they did it before... and after they killed Archimedes it set the scientific world back 2000 years....
Former Idealist wrote:
Not to mention
Whenever the time comes that no one wants any of the paper currencies, and business is reduced to barter, there wont be a whole lot of commerce going on... I used to think that I was not smart enough to understand what was being done because I could see the end game coming... But now I think I probably was smart enough, and realized that the power brokers understood that end game too - only they plan to bail out to their private island paradise when it hits the fan....
China doesnt want our bonds anymore? No problem - Ben will give them fiat dollars for them, but then what will Hu want to do with those dollars? Buy up some American real estate or companies? That didnt work out so well for the Japanese when they were buying everything in the 1970's... Buy high, sell low....
Printing money, or using your new credit card, makes you feel like you are better off at first - until eventually you cant even pay the interest and they take all your new stuff away... When the central bank does it, eventually they take all of the purchasing power out of your wages and savings... That's gonna leave a mark...
Juvenal Delinquent wrote:
Su caja is mi caja.
Loved that line - brought to mind -
Su Casa is Caja Casa!
barfly wrote:
Obama is treating Hu as an equal
Might be worse than that - it looked like he was bowing to him...
The coming apartment glut will not help the residential recovery....
And another thing - after 3 years of an abnormal market, or maybe the new normal market, there are a lot of us who are waiting for a better time to sell... it's not the total resale market, but a sizeable part of it that has been on hold for all this time... Each case is unique and I have known some who have thrown in the towel, but there are a lot more who would sell for the right price because their housing needs have changed...
Inflation and rising real estate prices went hand-in-hand in the 1970's but I'm not sure which one caused the other.... This time, the inflation will undoubtedly be caused by the profligate spending of the Congress, and the willingness of the Fed to soak up all the treasury bonds... Maybe real estate prices will get pushed up in the process, and if the populace at large gets the idea that real estate is the place to be again, we could get that long sought 2nd real estate bubble...
Better take your coat - I am in Oceano and it's pretty chilly out there....
I found this article to be interesting - probably get the red hat here... Condo owners in Florida who are paying their bills are fed up with freeloaders...
Thanks for all the great info and conversations, from all of you, whether I agree with you or you are a complete idiot....
Love - ShadowInventory
Tim waiting for 2012 wrote:
when that 1.5 million units will be absorbed into the market
That would be right about the time that I list the Shadow Bunker for sale.... And bankers will be mining ice cubes from Hades too.....
The dollar has lost about 90% of it's value since 1960...
JimPortlandOR wrote:
Underground economy, here we come
Perfect for someone who owns no real estate and can move at will - if something bad happens like an audit or a lawsuit, disappear in the night and take your few paltry assets with you, and do it all over again elsewhere... I've seen it done before by a particularly ruthless person who also rang up a ton of fradulent charges on every credit card number he had copied over the time he had a store open...
Lots of SMB's have already folded, giving the survivors a larger customer base... However I still know many who are hanging on by their fingernails, and the ones with debt are probably going to fail too... Even though there is slight growth now it's probably just a seasonal bump, and until something happens to change the underlying problems I dont expect any rapid growth... Even if we embarked on a committed program to address the underlying issues, we still have the massive debt dragging us down... and I dont see the country having the guts to take any strong medicine anyway... The shoals of default lie dead ahead, while the Captain is dancing in India...
Hoopajoops LTD wrote:
What do you for a living, sportsfan?
HAHAHAHA - He's a lawyer.....
Bubblisimo Gerkinov wrote:
"Behind the Curve" would be a great name for a blog.
I like "Behind the Curtain"...
Why Me wrote:
as a Chicago politician, President O
Duly anointed by the Chicago Mob and Machine, with the blessings of the Alinsky sacraments....
splat wrote:
Cash for bulldozers
Actually this would be a pretty good idea - there are many cities across the country that have blighted buildings that need to be removed... Paying the unemployed to tear them down and clean up the lots would solve a couple of problems... I'm generally opposed to most govt programs but this is something that would actually do some good as long as the funding was not looted by the program managers... - ah, probably too much too hope for...
creditcriminalslovetarp wrote:
all with 20% ue.....
UE doesnt count working for cash... Friend of mine in the SF bay area says even all the homeless have smart phones... I dont....
Barley wrote:
the sites screaming
CR doesnt need to scream - the commentariat does it for him...
NOTaREALmerican wrote:
socialism for yourself.
If I were in charge, I would cancel SS and Medicare both immediately. However, I seem to be rather alone in this view - whenever I bring it up I never find anyone who agrees with me. Many people say that they paid for it and it is just getting their own money back - and they have a good point. My point is all that money they paid in was spent when paid, and it's not there to pay them back now. So they got ripped off. Better to cancel it than to continue to borrow money to pay out now, and leave the debt to your grandkids.
glimmerman wrote:
As if they could ever agree on anything. The debate is about who's bankster butts are going to be saved....