Men Should Never Donate Sperm

Destroying trust in America, one institution at a time.

Having a Hard Time Seeing the Use in Consumer Confidence

Haven't studied consumer confidence much, so with this new fangled multi-series charting option of the Fed I contrasted GDP growth versus consumer confidence. Didn't really find much interesting except that when we go into recession people's confidence goes down. Which is like saying when cute, redheads that are (ahem) "blessed by the Lord" walk into the room men can't chew gum and talk at the same time;

Wish there were more redheads in economics.

Fed Charty Goodness

The St. Louis Fed has improved their FRED database allowing you to impose various series on the same chart.

I've recreated one of my favorite charts contrasting unemployment versus housing starts, where drops in housing starts precede jumps in unemployment by 6-12 months. I see unemployment ticking up;

NAFTA Did Work

I occasionally like to bring the specter of NAFTA up now and again because so many people dismissed it as this horrible thing and the agreement hadn't even been signed yet. A reminder that international trade is indeed a good thing;

Why the Republicans Will Win the Presidency in 2008

I am fully confident now that whoever the Republicans tender as their candidate for president, they will win. And I base this opinion on two things;

1. Hillary is entitled to the nomination and no amount of common sense or strategy is going to convince democrat caucus goers otherwise. The power brokers of the democrat party are all pro-Hillary (just like all the Republican power brokers in the past were all pro-Bush) and no matter how flawed she is, she is going to get the nomination (though I think Barack deserves it more).

2. Hillary is unelectable to the masses, which to the democrats dismay is not them.

The only reason I recently came to the conclusion of number 2 is this jim dandy chart from The Economist right here;



Good

freaking

cripes.

19% honesty and morality?

The worst, the absolute worst thing to the Republicans the democrats could do is nominate Obama.

Which they won't.

Because (despite me disagreeing with him on every policy) I believe him to be an honest man and to the democrat power brokers he isn't "black enough."

Enjoy your own undoing.

And So It Begins

I always fathomed the glut of property combined with a low dollar would make US asset prices attractive to foreigners;

See story

Happy Monday Morning!

Saw an interesting chart in Time Magazine (yes, got desperate, was waiting for an oil change and all that was available was Good House Keeping, People or Time. Choose your poison.)

In any case this chart was not only interesting because of the drastic difference between the populations of cities during the work day and not, but that it provides additional support for my call for corporations to fully endorse telecommuting to work. I remember working and living in Chicago and remembering how downtown Chicago was literally a ghost town when the work day was over and how the buildings were effectively fixed assets wasting away for 16 hours a day. You could literally do 55 MPH (sans the local representative of CPD) on city streets and probably drive faster down LaSalle Avenue than most small farming towns. But what I also remember was driving through Chicago and hitting the south side at about 430AM and seeing people QUE UP AT THE STOP LIGHTS ON THE ON RAMP TO THE INTERSTATE. Alas my call for mass telecommuting.

However, the chart also visually displayed something I hadn't thought of before and that was if telecommuting was fully pursued, then not only would the value of oil drop, but the value of another commodity would drop;

commercial real estate.

If massive skyscraper buildings were no longer needed to house millions of cubical monkeys, then their value would plummet like modern day condos.

Alas, this is probably the real reason corporate America doesn't want to endorse telecommuting.

That's Your Political Platform???

Australia is doomed if a party whose platform is basically "signing the Kyoto Protocol" wins.

Not terrorism.

Not boosting the economy.

Not lowering debt or avoiding recession.

Not life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

No, we gotta sign that damn Kyoto Protocol.

Seriously, how frivolous is your party when you think this is the most important issue your country faces? And how luxurious are the people if they think this is the biggest issue in their country.

I wonder who they'll elect when a real problem faces the country.

My condolences to Frank.

I'm Moving to Taiwan

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,312629,00.html

How Women Drive Housing Prices and Men Drive Rents

So I was researching different countries in terms of their government debt and obligation to future generations, and as I'm wont to do, I came across some other information completely unrelated to my current mission that I found interesting none the less.

Normally we look at the US and the US "housing crisis." As if the bubble was only relegated to here. However that is not the case. Not by a long shot. Many other countries saw property bubbles occur in the mid-2000's and are facing the same debacle we're about to here. And the best way to measure the degree of a bubble is house price to rents and/or house price to income.

I like house price to rents because it relates the asset (the house) to the true variable that drives and determines its value (rents). I took some of the highest bubbly markets and least bubbly markets to show relatively how bad/good the US' housing bubble was and while housing prices increased 38% faster than rents, compared to Ireland, the UK and our Canuck friends to the north that's only half the overvaluation they're experienced near 75%. Spain outdid us all with a doubling of property relative to rents.

The second ratio compares housing prices to incomes. This affects what I call the "girl factor" of housing. Men can live in dumps. Long as there's a shower stall, a toilet, a couple electrical outlets for video games, and maybe an indentation in a wall somewhere to install a bar, we're pretty set. We don't even need bedrooms as most of us sleep on couches. About the only "luxury" I considered as a guy was installing a urinal in the basement which would be really cool because I could show it off to my friends and they'd say, "Hey, Cappy's got a urinal! Wow! That's so cool!" Alas, if it were only men, all of the housing landscape would consist of slight modern caves furnished with electricity and plumbing. But women they like non-necessities like drapes.

Who the heck buys drapes? And what are drapes? Aren't they curtains? I looked into curtains one time, something like $200. Went to Michael's Fabrics and for $40 found enough black vynil that I just stapled over the window sills and now I have drapes... or curtains or whatever the heck they're called. Sure my house looks like a meth house, but I saved $160!

In other words, what men are willing to pay for are the functionalities of a property; shelter, shower and shaving and some video gamage. Women want to pay for the aesthetics of the property. Drapes, carpet, landscaping, location, fireplace, wall paper, neighborhood, furniture, countless labor hours spent on picking paint colors etc., which disconnects the price of a house from its rents. ie-women treat housing like a durable consumer good whereas men treat housing as a service.

Thus, what drives the price of housing then as women have more and more purchasing power (and as many married men I surmise will testify women are the ones making the decision anyway on all matters of housing) may not necessarily be rents, but incomes, as more and more women are will to pay for various non-rental attribute of the property.

Still, the same ratios more or less hold. Spain, Ireland, the UK and Canada are most pricey whereas the US kind of is in the middle.


Of note however is that three countries have particularly low price to rents and price to incomes;

Germany, Japan and Switzerland.

Maybe Americans should be looking to buy some nice properties in the Alps...hmmmm...bachelor pad in the Alps...with them Heidi or Helga girls from Hogans Heroes, pouring beer steins for me and my buddies...complete with urinal.

If We Shot All the Underhanded Mortgage Brokers...

I remember trying to buy my first house many years ago. The mortgage broker that agreed to finance me had me come into the office to sign the papers and on the closing costs were all the standard fees and then a "miscellaneous brokering fee" for $5,000. I then promptly declined their financing.

Sounds like the scum are still out there.

Business Friendly Environment

Ala Yearning to Breathe Free;

Seems the Small Business and Entreprenuership Council has ranked states on business friendliness.

The rankings located here.

Surprise surprise, California, DC and Minnesota are in the bottom.

Osama Can't Get It Up

Osama the impotent.

Seriously, he didn't even cause a recession in the US.

I know he's the most sought after man, but seriously, you want to talk about somebody who truly is irrelevant and really didn't cause or create anything, Osama Bin Laden is the quentessential definfition of failure.

If it's any consolation to the Americans that actually care about America, when he dies, he's going to be pissed off that he effectively did NOTHING bar bring about

So, if you really want to piss of Osama Bin Pointless, go out and kiss a girl, kiss a guy, have a martini, have premarital sex, listen to some Frank Sinatra, and continue on.

Happy Thanksgiving All!

The CDO Blues

I remember it must have been about late 2005, maybe early 2006. The bank I was working for was advancing loans at a "loan to value" of 80% and in some cases 85%. So if the property or asset was worth $100,000, we'd loan out $80,000 or maybe up to $85,000. I was looking at property prices and I said, "I think we should lower our loan to value to 75 maybe 70%."

The statement was summarily ignored.

Of course, like many things, now I watch various predictions (which weren't terribly hard to make) come true and see the same people with their pants caught down during Dotcom Mania sit there and scratch their heads today.

But the issue of what loan to value banks lent out at had larger effects than just for the local neighborhood bank down the street. It's having an effect throughout the country's banking and mortgage system as there are billions and billions of dollar's worth of CDO's, securities that were essentially mortgages packed together and sold on the second market.

The whole selling point or gimmick of the CDO was that, yes, part of the portfolio of mortgages were sub prime or worse, but the majority of the mortgages were high quality, triple A rated mortgages. The idea was to provide a slightly higher rate of return, but mix in different qualities of mortgages in the mix to lower the risk.

What's sad though, is that say you have a great borrower, low risk and so forth and so on. That may get you a triple A rating, but that doesn't mean you lent out $100,000 on a property that was worth $120,000. Matter of fact, given the over valuation and my now aging recommendation that banks lower their loan to values, it seems these AAA mortgages loan out $100,000, on properties that were only worth $80,000.



What I love though, is the now 20 cents on the dollar people are getting for loaning to a BBB- risk.

Alas, I'll say it again for the cheap seats, there was no lack of economists, analysts and just plain ol' smart people that warned about this. And all of it could have EASILY been avoided if you just had an economist in the house...or rather should I say LISTENED to the economist in the house.

Sadly, it seems in America it's more important not to rock the boat than prevent it from sinking.

The Real Reason Al-Qaeda Thinks They Can Win

Cripes.


Will somebody please tell me what the heck this is???? And what man succumbs to this torture and humiliation? Seriously, I had a dog, very proud dog, named Pretzel. Small wiener dog, but still thought he could take on the world. And if you dared to put on a coat or shirt of some kind to protect him from the Minnesota winters, he would droop down in shame, grumble in a half growl/whimper as if you had put pink bunny ears on him, utterly ashamed of himself. Respecting my dog's wish to be manly, I never put that shirt on him again. And while he was shaking and shivering in the cold, at least he had his dignity and manliness.

Seriously, think about it. Al Qaeda would have thought twice about attacking us if Patton or John Wayne was in charge. And John Wayne and Patton would never be caught dead in one of these contraptions. But oh, no. Now me and the men in my generation have to be sensitive. We have to wear these reverse, pregnancy male backpack thingies. I'm sure it's a great deterrent to America's enemies. Maybe we can get themselves to laugh at us to death.

Ug, OK so I got a couple posts on this about "how dare you insult somebody with MS"

People, it's and ADVERTISEMENT FOR FOR ROCHE DRUGS. The woman is a model, so is the guy. They aren't actually married. I don't know these people. It is a SCANNED IMAGE from a magazine. The post is not about MS.

What I've Always Suspected

I respect the most ardent communist that believes what he or she is saying more than some wishy washy type that just wants to sit on the fence and refuses to have an independent thought in an attempt to placate everybody.

At parties in my youth you could tell these people as they would say things like;

"Well, Rush Limbaugh is certainly a great entertainer."

What the hell is that??? Arguably the most incendiary person in politics over the past 20 years and you have that "opinion?"

Same thing when they say "well, I'm an independent, I like to look at both sides of the issues and compromise in between."

As Margaret Thatcher said, "Compromise is the absence of leadership."

So seriously, I do respect people I completely disagree with more than some make-nice-with-everybody placator.

However, this chart from The Economist confirmed something I've always suspected of "independents:"

They're just democrats in disguise.

Note "independents" practically have the same numbers in this poll as the democrats.


Alas, Independents should just be called "Don't Rock the Boat Democrats."

Why Oil Hasn't Hurt Us Yet

In middle school they gave you this token dabble in economics through social studies which consisted of a stock market game where you'd pick a stock, based on it's cool name and somehow thought that over the next three weeks there was some rhyme, reason or wisdom to be gained by this pointless exercise. And so this is how we introduce economics to our kids.

But another thing I did remember was two years later my sophomore year in high school where my economics teacher pointed out that every time there was a spike in oil there was an ensuing recession. Thrice this happened in the past 30 years of the chart he showed us, so I figured that was enough to cause a relationship. However since the latest oil embargo, our economy has yet to slip into recession when there's an economic shock in the price of oil. Matter of fact, the economy remains stubbornly resistant to recession in the face of not only the high price of oil, but a crushing credit crunch as well. But the reason is that we produce more GDP with a mere fraction of the oil we did back in the day, making the price of oil less effective on our economy;


Of course, don't count a recession out.

The Average IQ in the US Would Triple

Seriously, it would.

I Spoke Too Soon

This would happen too.

Why I Will Never Run for President

Because this literally would happen...a lot.