Archive for June, 2008
QOTD
Monday, June 30th, 2008
“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
- Barack Obama
Luxury Kibbutz
Monday, June 30th, 2008
60 miles from no where, in the heart of the panhandle, the folks who developed Seaside show us just how full of themselves they’ve become. Sky Florida – the new Luxury Kibbutz. 24 x 80-foot “cottage” lots starting $90K.
How I Spent My Stimulus
Friday, June 27th, 2008
“OHH to the good oh i spent myn on a 91 chevy s-10! trying to out smart the goverment by lowering my gas bill!! so nice to get free money! hope happens agen soon!..Keep peace everyone!.. Please go vote!”
“free money”??
Overall though, seems like folks put it to good use.
Hidden Gems In The Dodd (D) Foreclosure Bill
Tuesday, June 24th, 2008
The proposal requires information reporting on payment card and third party network transactions. Payment settlement entities, including merchant acquiring banks and third party settlement organizations, or third party payment facilitators acting on their behalf, will be required to report the annual gross amount of reportable transactions to the IRS and to the participating payee.
Closing down the eBay / PayPal loop hole and hey, lets throw in a little credit card transaction monitoring too.
Do you spend more than $10,000.00 a year on your credit card? Well if this goes through, after 2010, the I.R.S. will be watching you.
Hat tip to Steve for the info –
Edit – I think it also does away with the home ownership capital gains exemption, although I can’t tell for sure.
Bumped
Monday, June 23rd, 2008
Boston Globe’s new photo blog – The Big Picture.
Flood Pictures
Monday, June 23rd, 2008
Not much coverage on this in the national news AFAICT – seems everybody is concentrating on other topics. According to CNN, the hot topics of the day are “George Carlin”, West Nile Virus”, “Gas Prices”, “Iran”, and “Election Center”. I wonder if this has something to do with the folks being affected by the flooding.
Update – Those pictures were posted on Boston Globe’s new photo blog – The Big Picture.
Awesome!
Subscribed.
Quote Of The Day
Saturday, June 21st, 2008
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
—Mark Twain, 1857
Bubble?
Friday, June 20th, 2008
In short, my conjecture is that commodity prices are the result of portfolio shift against liquid assets by sovereign investors, sovereign wealth funds, partly triggered by lax monetary policy, especially in the US. Is this a harbinger of higher CPI inflation? If interest rates continue to be low, my answer would be a resounding yes. But there is probably room for an effective anti-inflationary battle. This will likely call for a sharp rise in interest rates and will enhance the risk of deepening recession, particularly if financial vulnerabilities have not been resolved. Thus, policymakers should seriously start worrying about inflation and stop chasing imaginary destabilising speculators.
Maybe it’s not the speculators after all, maybe it’s the FED?
Zero
Friday, June 20th, 2008
Obama Goes Private
Thursday, June 19th, 2008
Obama Forgoes Public Funds in First for Major Candidate
Kudos to Obama, while he seems a fan of nationalizing all sort of things, when it comes to his own campaign he decided to privatize it. A very honorable and very conservative thing to do. 
