rkbabang

You mean just like we do for Africa... it doesn't seem like it's good for us in the long term. In sociology, instability breeds instability nothing good would come out of it. What's needed in the middle east like anywhere else for that matter is good incentives for the leaders to act on the best interests of the population they represent. Get that straightened out and you have another bright billion people to solve the world's problems. BeerBaron +1 and I have no confidence that the US would stay out of the Middle East and let them fight it out among themselves any more than the US has stayed out of Europe in the last hundred years. There were two big squabbles in Europe that the US inserted themselves needlessly into, well the 2nd one might have been necessary, but it was caused largely by the US involving itself in the 1st one. The problem with the US is that it can't seem to mind its own damn business. Causing chaos in the Middle East is just playing into the wet dreams of the lunatics in charge of the US war machine, who are just itching to let it loose "for real".

I don't think it is a matter if simply convincing everyone. It will be a matter of cost. The first quantum computers will cost $Millions. You can bet the NSA will be one of the first to acquire one, as will Google and other large organizations. It will be a long time however before you have one in your home to do quantum encryption on your hard disk. Right now you and I can easily and at no extra cost with the hardware we already have encrypt our files so that even a large well funded organization or government can not gain access to them. (Of course they could kidnap/arrest you, put a gun to your head (or simply threaten to throw you in a cage for a long time), and demand that you decrypt them, but that will always be possible). Once the first quantum computers become available their will be no way to electronically keep secrets from some organizations. And the problem with typewriters and filing cabinets is where/how to store them securely.

That is my understanding as well, while currently used crypto systems would become easy to break, quantum computing would make crpto systems possible that are unbreakable even in theory. So cryptography would actually become more secure, not less. Of course there could be sometime between when the older systems become breakable to the Feds and when the new quantum based systems are widely available. This will not be a good situation.

A. Gary Shilling believes that in 4 years we'll be back to our normal long-term rate of GDP growth. He is aware of all the issues you've raised. So even though they sound convincing, there are other things to think about as well that are also important. For one thing, I doubt the debt has to be repaid as you suggest (one form of repayment is to issue more debt as the old bonds mature). You just need to grow it slower than GDP and you're golden long-term. So you can run deficits in perpetuity and yet still be deleveraging at the same time. There was also a boatload of malinvestment over those 19 years. Did that contribute to the slow growth (and relatively poor market returns) that we've seen? I imagine it didn't help. Could the next 19 years not have this drag? Shiller is certainly smarter than me so I would probably go with his analysis if I were you. I'm just too skeptical to get there myself. Its hard for me to reconcile that there hasn't been massive malinvestments over the last 5 years and that it wont continue until a market correcting event. Its hard for me to believe that politicians will suddenly get fiscally responsible after decades of overspending or that the American voter will actually demand real change. I think we'll get back to a good place eventually....after exhausting every alternative and being forced to by things events outside of our control (debt crisis, inflation threat, two decades of 0 growth, war, etc). It's a very cynical view, but it has thus far been supported year after year of continuous massive deficits, constant manipulations of market participants (malinvestment), constant war, and politicians who regularly prove how inept they are on both sides of the aisle, etc. Yeah i think the analogy of the lobster that is slowly boiled and does not jump out, vs the lobster that is thrown in boiling water and jumps out, is in order here. I think people blame corporations and banks too much. Few point fingers at politicians. They usually are the good guys because they want a home for everyone! And they dole out free stuff. On the one hand corporations are evil, and on the other hand people are marvelling about the wonders of modern technology and how amazing that all is. Which ironically is a direct consequence of capitalism. Even smart guys like jon stewart don't really understand economics that well. When it all goes to shit, everyone probably points there fingers at bankers and evil corporations dodging taxes again. And the whole thing starts all over again after that. It is almost as if economics should be taught in a simple, entertaining and easy to understand manner in high school... Yes, the people who steal from me by threatening my life if I don't pay up then give me some of my money back in the form of public goods and services are the good guys, while the people who put their own capital and time at risk to create jobs, wealth, and human progress in general are the bad guys because they have more than me. By the way I've always heard that analogy of the slowly boiling pot told with frogs. I didn't know lobsters could jump. I've thrown my share of lobsters into boiling water and I've never seen one jump.

Which is really ironic for a value investing board. Some miners trading for less than cash, mines closing, extreme negative sentiment. I'm not interested in miners, that's firmly in my too hard pile, but I have owned gold in the past. I'm waiting for ~$800/oz to own it again.

That's no moon.

I know that. I meant that in general terms, the commodity bulls always find a reason why price of their favorite thing has to go a certain way, but reality often finds ways of making it go otherwise. Obviously the specific dynamics will be different for oil and gold and potash and natural gas and nickel and copper and uranium and wheat and pork bellies and gravel... I was just trying to point out that the cost of production has little effect on the price of gold. You could have the cost of production sky-rocket and still see the price of gold plummet. Because the supply is so stable and predictable the demand is the only variable that is really in question. The price of oil however is tied very closely to both the supply and the demand. The demand isn't going to be weakening any time soon, and the cost of production is rising, so you can draw conclusions from that. Of course there could be unforeseen events that change the outcome (cheap fusion power would kill the price of oil, discovery of a huge oil field with low extraction costs, or something else that effects the demand and/or supply), but in the absence of one black swan or another, I don't see oil getting very much cheaper.

Didn't they say the same thing about gold? Gold is an entirely different animal. Just about all the gold that has ever been mined is still around and relatively little of it is mined every year. The only thing that has a large effect on its price is the demand (do people want to hold it or sell it off). Oil on the other hand is quickly burned and then it is gone. Therefore the cost of production quickly effects how much is available on the market and therefor on its price.

Now THAT is a nice IRR Also this is rather strange: If Wynn puts his elbow through it, it goes up in value apparantly. :D Sweet business plan. 1) Buy a painting. 2) Put your elbow through it. 3) Profit!

For durable goods, or for stuff where there's a real difference in quality, the value option can indeed be to buy higher quality, because you actually get more for your money. There's a saying about how poor people pay more for shoes (or boots, whatever) over time because the rich person will buy a good pair that will last for years and years while the crappy shoes will need to be replaced every few years, resulting in a higher cumulative price. I guess non-perishable items. For food we buy ingredients, not much packaged or canned. For cars and other perishable items I buy the best cheap thing I can. Some perishable things it does pay to buy quality. For example running shoes. I wear through those quickly, but bad shoes go even quicker, decent shoes are better on my body and last longer. For non-perishable items I pay up for quality when appropriate. I do the same math probably everyone on this board does. I always figure out how many cheap items I can purchase for the same price as the good item. If it's more than two and the expected lifetime is more than half it's better to go the cheap route. But more often the price differential isn't that large so it's better to pay for quality. Absolutely. One interesting thing going on the fresh food/paleo-type diet 4 years ago did for us is that brands completely disappeared from our kitchen. We don't buy packaged food at all. Just fresh fruits/veggies, meats(mostly local grass fed) and fish (mostly wild caught), as for beverages just our own filtered well water or brewed coffee (from local roaster in town) or tea (loose tea). The one brand you will see in our fridge is Kerrygold Irish Butter. But that is only because it is the only grass fed butter in the grocery stores around us and the farm where we buy our grass fed raw heavy cream charges way too much for their butter. With durable goods, I use the same calculation as you. Sometimes I buy the quality one even if the calculation comes out slightly in the multiple-cheap items favor. You need to factor in the trouble of shopping again for another cheap one 2 or 3 times rather than just 1 time for the quality item. My time and stress levels have a cost as well and need to be factored in to the equation.

I use it, although logging in today after seeing your post was the first time I'd logged in for about 6 months I think. I'd almost forgot about goodreads. https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/8431549-eric-pavao

I've spent the last few months re-reading F. Paul Wilson's The Adversary Cycle/Repairman Jack series in order by when they take place (not by when they were published), starting with 'The Keep' and ending with 'Nightworld'. That is about 25 books (26 after 'Fear City' comes out this month). I'm on 'Infernal' right now, so 8 more to go. And of course I have 'Fear City' on pre-order which will come in this month, so that makes 9 more to go. EDIT: FYI if you're interested in the order to read them in to get one continuous story from start to finish: Pre-Repairman Jack Adversary Cycle Novels 1) The Keep 2) The Touch 3) Reborn 4) Reprisal Young Repairman Jack Novels (young adult novels) 5) Secret Histories 6) Secret Circles 7) Secret Vengeance Early Repairman Jack Novels 8) Cold City 9) Dark City 10) Fear City (TBP: Nov 2014) Repairman Jack Novels 11) The Tomb 12) Legacies 13) Conspiracies 14) All The Rage 15) Hosts 16) The Haunted Air 17) Gateways 18) Crisscross 19) Infernal 20) Harbingers 21) Bloodline 22) By The Sword 23) Ground Zero 24) Fatal Error 25) The Dark at the End The Last Adversary Cycle Novel 26) Nightworld

From Skeptical Science here : http://skepticalscience.com/climate-models-intermediate.htm Don't forge that climate is not weather guys, these are long term trends which are quite different. Exactly and because there are far more variables and feedback paths, many known and many unknown, climate is far, far, far harder to predict with any accuracy than weather. Which is the reason none of the doom and gloom predictions from 30, 20, or even 10 years ago have come to pass. I'm not saying global warming is not happening (I don't want to be labeled a "denier" and ex-communicated from the Holy Church of the Environment), but the real answer is that we simply don't know what effect the increase CO2 in our atmosphere will have long term. Discussing this with true believers is like discussing the existence of god. The real answer is I don't know and, regardless of what you think, you don't know either.

I'm confused as to what your position is here (and the general position of that Facebook group)... Does my position matter? :) Apparently, to many former classmates, it did. I received PMs asking when I became a Republican. (For the record, before moving to DC, I owned a Prius & tried to get my dad to buy a Nissan Leaf because he doesn't drive much anyway. My parents now drive my Prius. My position is in accordance with the stereotype of Prius drivers.) Yale's Business School (the group was set up for the 2014 & 2015 classes to communicate) has a lot of students who are joint degrees with their Forestry School and the entire school leans fairly eco-friendly. Amazingly, or perhaps predictably, once I revealed my personal position, the rhetoric toned down a notch. And yet, should it have? Nothing had changed in what I had said -- only the perceptions of who was saying it. Highly disappointing since we literally had a required class on avoiding these biases. I'm chuckling because your clarification is as clear as Alan Greenspan! Parsing all of the above, I guess you're on my side. Not that it matters, as you say! That was intentional. :) A more clear statement of my position would be as follows: Clearly, the world is warmer than it used to be. (Surface & Ocean.) It's stupid to claim otherwise. However, it's unclear whether this will necessarily lead to calamitous outcomes. It's similarly stupid to claim otherwise. The question I posed to the group, which went unanswered, and I guess I'll pose here as well is the following: Imagine a completely flat surface and a machine that drops grains of sand onto it one at a time. Over time, you'll build a bit of a sand pile. At some point, each additional grain of sand will either (a) do nothing or (b) cause a landslide. It is difficult to know (1) which grain of sand will do it, (2) whether a landslide will happen and (3) if a landslide happens the general magnitude of the slide. (In mathematical circles, this is an Abelian sandpile problem.) Now, this is a sandpile that exhibits self-organizing criticality with only two variables. Sand and gravity. If we can't figure this one out -- what makes us think that we can figure out the exact future states (or even probabilistic future states) for a much more difficult complex dynamical system, e.g. the climate? It's lunacy. The less sophisticated question (in the same vein) is that if a meteorologist can't tell me if it's going to rain 365 days from now, then what makes anyone think that a climate scientist can tell me what the world looks like 100 years from now. I think you either typed two extra numbers or you forgot the decimal point. You must have meant: "If a meteorologist can't tell me if it's going to rain 3.65 days from now..."

I'm not sure about "good for energy" or even what that means. Oil/Gas? Solar/Wind? Nuclear? Your ability to run long distances? But in general whenever the Senate and Whitehouse are held by different parties that is a good thing for the country. Gridlock is good. The best thing you can hope for is for them to get nothing done.

I'm ready for the coming ban on incandescents -- I'll go back to gas lighting! http://carolinalanterns.com/ :) Those are awesome! Thanks for the link.

This one made me cringe: "(5) Mandating Solar Buildings: The vanguard of government promotion of the solar industry, solar mandates require that new and renovated buildings include solar power. I can imagine a world a few decades hence where every building is equipped with a mini-fusion reactor which supplies all of the building's energy (no more gas/oil/propane needed), yet every new building built must budget for the required solar panels which are useless, but the big solar lobby fights the law from ever being repealed.... Do we never learn? It really is a wonder the candle making industry never got the electric light bulb banned.

How did you manage to drop out of the fourth grade? The police would take my kids away if I tried that on them. In most states you can drop out when you are 16 regardless of what grade you are in. Maybe he stayed back a few times. :) But seriously if he was home schooled he was probably better off, and even if not, truancy laws may or may not be enforced depending on where you live. My Dad's family immigrated to the US when he was 8 years old and his parents sent him to work on a farm rather than enroll him in school. He never did learn how to read or write.

So what was it like inside? I've heard of people going in before, but I thought those were only stories intended to scare children into doing what they're told. I know, I wasn't sure what to expect either. But it was comforting to see that it pretty much looks the same as it did 30 years ago. The best way to describe it is remember what it looked like the last time you were there. Now picture the exact same store, but only the Kenmore re-badged appliances now have stainless fronts, the tube TVs have been replaced by flat screens, and the shoes now say Craftsman and DieHard. That's pretty much it. You can almost see the Brady Bunch singing in the aisles.

I have a confession to make, I actually walked through a Sears store this weekend. It was pouring raining late Saturday afternoon and my wife wanted to go to the mall for something and it seemed like everyone else had the same idea. We couldn't find a spot anywhere, cars were following shoppers out to their cars and waiting for them to pull out. So I said to my wife, I'm going to go to the Sears entrance I bet we find a spot there, and sure enough we found one not too far from the door. As we were walking past the shoe department heading to the mall entrance I saw Craftsman and DieHard shoes and thought WTF? I don't know if DieHard underwear exists or not, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did.

Buy any pair of Craftsman shoes and get a free pair of DieHard underwear.

I had a similar experience with Bank of America. Although they took my side, I wasn't very satisfied. It was over a $50 bill at Pizza Hut on the other side of the country. I told them I haven't been in that region in years. They refunded me and investigated. I thought that was the end of it but then they mailed me a picture of the receipt, which clearly wasn't my signature, and said I need to sign the accompanying page saying it's not my signature and get it back to them the very NEXT DAY. Luckily they let me fax it, but it was annoying. I would think that they can a) see for themselves that it's not my signature by comparing w/their records and b) see that the purchase was on the other side of the country, with no other purchase in that area years before or after; and trust me based on that. I've disputed a bill with AMEX as well and it's much smoother. They make it clear that they trust you and want to be on your side. My dispute was only over $100, but that was what made it insane to spend $80 on cab rides there and back to get my card credited. It is ridiculous that they wouldn't credit me over the phone. I told this to CitiBank, the only thing the tour company did was send Citi a picture of the original receipt with my real signature on it and that was that. The charge was determined to be legitimate and reappeared on my account. It isn't much money, but I'm glad to find this out now before some issue ever comes up that involves something more substantial. Yea, makes sense. Amex would have heard your argument and realized it was ridiculous of the tour company to expect you to show up in person to cancel. My dispute for Amex was that I had purchased tickets to a college football alumni "event" at a bar in NYC, for my college team. But when we got there, there wasn't anything special going on, there was no reserved table, no special food or drinks, nothing. Nobody even checked our tickets. In other words, anybody could have just gone to the bar and sat down, which was mostly empty anyway. I explained this to Amex and they agreed that it was silly and credited me right away. Seems a hell of a lot more reasonable. I wonder if this is the reason, rather than cost, that some merchants don't accept AmEx. It is a lot easier to screw over MasterCard holders and get away with it.

I had a similar experience with Bank of America. Although they took my side, I wasn't very satisfied. It was over a $50 bill at Pizza Hut on the other side of the country. I told them I haven't been in that region in years. They refunded me and investigated. I thought that was the end of it but then they mailed me a picture of the receipt, which clearly wasn't my signature, and said I need to sign the accompanying page saying it's not my signature and get it back to them the very NEXT DAY. Luckily they let me fax it, but it was annoying. I would think that they can a) see for themselves that it's not my signature by comparing w/their records and b) see that the purchase was on the other side of the country, with no other purchase in that area years before or after; and trust me based on that. I've disputed a bill with AMEX as well and it's much smoother. They make it clear that they trust you and want to be on your side. My dispute was only over $100, but that was what made it insane to spend $80 on cab rides there and back to get my card credited. It is ridiculous that they wouldn't credit me over the phone. I told this to CitiBank, the only thing the tour company did was send Citi a picture of the original receipt with my real signature on it and that was that. The charge was determined to be legitimate and reappeared on my account. It isn't much money, but I'm glad to find this out now before some issue ever comes up that involves something more substantial.

I'm starting to understand why customer service is such an important thing with AmEx card holders. I just got screwed by CitiBank. I was in Mexico this summer and paid for a tour, I changed my mind and called the tour company to cancel 3 days before it was supposed to take place. They told me they would not refund my money unless I showed up at their location (a $40 cab ride from my resort), so I told them no, I am just going to refute the charges with my credit card company. CitiBank refunded my money while the "investigation" was pending (2 months), but I just found out today that they are taking their side, not mine, and the charge is back on my account. I'm paying my bill, claiming my reward balance and cancelling that account this week. Bastards! I've been a card holder for decades and the one time I've needed them they screw me over.

That's a great story. I was going to reply that the hardest part would be actually finding a K-Mart, but first I went to their store locator and wouldn't you know there are actually 4 of them in my state. One of them is only 11 miles from my house. Who knew? I guess I don't drive through those types of neighborhoods that often.