Maybe spending stupid amounts of money on power cords isn't entirely harmless

[esldude]

After blowing through three $400 Dysons in about as many years, I understand...

 

Kirby perhaps. I have one passed down from the 1970's I use on my wool rugs.

 

Seeing this is post 1001 on this thread I wonder how many have been about audio and how many of those addressed the original topic of the Nordost con?

 

Also, $400 a year is what some would spend on good replacement vacuum tubes for some gear. Different vacuum different market I guess.

[Jud]

My point exactly - the Santa Fe area is well populated with older and crustier curmudgeons than my wife, I and the friends with whom we usually travel are......by far! But I felt at home there (we rented a beautiful townhouse in the Corazon development) and would happily live there if we hadn't just settled into our condo a mile outside of Philly.

 

We love Montana. One of my closest friends for 48 years lives in Big Timber, so we know Livingston, Bozeman, Billings & the intervening landscape well. We've had tater pigs, been to the Sweetgrass County Fair, fished the local streams, and generally raised hell on the back roads. It's a little harsh out there for us in winter, though.

 

We travel with one carry-on each, regardless of time or distance (unless we need formal clothes etc). I wear jeans & T-shirts pretty much everywhere, with an unconstructed sport jacket over a good T for "evenings out". We did 2 weeks in Hong Kong in November that way without a problem, and a week anywhere is child's play now. It took my wife a few trips to adapt, but now she loves it.

 

David

 

First time I took my future wife camping, she packed queen size pillows, aluminum chaises, and all the outfits and cosmetics she thought she'd need.

 

I performed triage ("this stays here, this stays, and this, and this; this can come with us... "). I saw her lower lip quiver as I went to remove her butane-fired hair curler, so I relented.

 

I made the mistake of listening to her about how to get back to the tent the first night we were out hiking, so we got lost in the woods for a while in the dark. She smoked then, so I was able to read a map by her lighter flame and get us to the road, where I flagged down a passing car. They took us to their cabin, where they fed us gin and tonics and we had an enjoyable conversation before they dropped us back at our car in the state park parking lot. We had Tastykakes for dinner and slept in the back seat. The next day we made it back to the tent. She got out the butane curling iron and got to work. When she was done, I had to admit she looked mighty cute with her hair curled.

[Allan F]

Seeing this is post 1001 on this thread I wonder how many have been about audio and how many of those addressed the original topic of the Nordost con?

Surely, that is inconsequential in view of the gravitas of the other topics discussed and/or debated.

[gmgraves]

And her cover up with the video and lying to the family members of the slain as they waited at the airfield to take delivery of the corpses. Pretty amazing

 

Pretty telling too! Of course, we all know that essentially all politicians lie, But Ms. Clinton abuses the privilege!

[Allan F]

I performed triage ("this stays here, this stays, and this, and this; this can come with us... "). I saw her lower lip quiver as I went to remove her butane-fired hair curler, so I relented.

There is nothing like really roughing it in the back country!

[gmgraves]

After blowing through three $400 Dysons in about as many years, I understand...

 

When I moved up here the The Reno Nevada area, I did not bring my old Dyson vacuum. It was on its last legs anyway, and I found that it clogged easily, so I figured that I'd buy one when I got here. Well, I found a Bissle 3-in-1 and bought it as a stop-gap until I could locate a good used (or better, re-furbished) Kirby. I never bought the Kirby. Why? Because the Bissle, at $20 NEW has turned out to be the best vacuum cleaner I've ever owned! I know it sounds like a joke, but honestly. it's light and powerful and has a straight-through "dirt path", so, unlike my Dyson, it never gets clogged. I find that it suits my needs perfectly. Take the floor attachment off and remove the long handle and it becomes the perfect upholstery vac. Great product, great design, and if it dies, who cares? It was only a double-sawbuck.

[gmgraves]

I don't disagree. However forcing American companies to either keep their money outside the US or to utilize inversions to escape paying taxes is ludicrous policy. Clearly having that money in the states rather than in England, Ireland, etc does little to stimulate our economy and quite frankly has done little to stimulate the economies of the countries they are in.

 

"education" I guess the one topic we haven't meandered towards on this thread. Now unlike medicine where the variables can be disputed as to how to measure outcome/$ spent, education is a much easier measure. No spending by the government has accelerated more in the last 20years than that on education and our metrics keep falling.

 

I don't have much faith that education is going to improve anytime soon here in the states.

 

Tariffs for durable goods manufactured by US companies off shore, is a very bad idea. If goods made in China or Mexico or wherever end up costing American companies the same (or more) than it costs to make them here, it will indeed force them to bring their manufacturing back Stateside. But, at what cost to the US consumer? Look at the difference between the wages of the average Chinese factory worker and his US counterpart. That $20 pancake griddle that one buys from Walmart, would then cost a LOT more. Maybe 5 times as much because that US factory worker is going to insist on $20+ an hour. What will those increased prices do to the US economy?

[Priaptor]

Tariffs for durable goods manufactured by US companies off shore, is a very bad idea. If goods made in China or Mexico or wherever end up costing American companies the same (or more) than it costs to make them here, it will indeed force them to bring their manufacturing back Stateside. But, at what cost to the US consumer? Look at the difference between the wages of the average Chinese factory worker and his US counterpart. That $20 pancake griddle that one buys from Walmart, would then cost a LOT more. Maybe 5 times as much because that US factory worker is going to insist on $20+ an hour. What will those increased prices do to the US economy?

 

No argument from me. I am not a believer in tariffs. That doesn't mean others aren't putting tariffs on goods being imported to their countries.

[17629]

"If goods made in China or Mexico or wherever end up costing American companies the same (or more) than it costs to make them here, it will indeed force them to bring their manufacturing back Stateside."

 

I don't know about that. Manufacturing is usually a long term commitment. With the current state of politics, I wouldn't want to go anywhere near the US. One administration wants something, and the next one wants to do just the opposite. Who wants to open up a business in that type of uncertainty?

[One and a half]

Tariffs for durable goods manufactured by US companies off shore, is a very bad idea. If goods made in China or Mexico or wherever end up costing American companies the same (or more) than it costs to make them here, it will indeed force them to bring their manufacturing back Stateside. But, at what cost to the US consumer? Look at the difference between the wages of the average Chinese factory worker and his US counterpart. That $20 pancake griddle that one buys from Walmart, would then cost a LOT more. Maybe 5 times as much because that US factory worker is going to insist on $20+ an hour. What will those increased prices do to the US economy?

 

Remember the story of the development of one the Apple iphones, Apple decided to engineer/design the concept in the US and then embarked on the trek to find people to design, know about fabrication, qa the whole works. They needed about 200 or so people to employ for the project. In the whole USA they found perhaps 15 that were found after searching for months, what about the rest, the project had to continue.

Apple found them all in China in less than a week of searching.

Depending on what you want to achieve, manufacturing overseas disease is now terminally based overseas, good intentions notwithstanding.

[crisnee]

WOW! What a thread.

 

Priaptor said "Personally I rather people express their opinions, biased or not..., " Yes! Just to know where they stand. We in the U.S. threaten non pc types with job loss, impeachment etc. and thus scare them from revealing themselves. I'd much rather deal with a bigot out in the open than the closeted variety.

 

And speaking of New Mexico. I lived in Santa Fe and Madrid--where David Bowie Fell to Earth, for a few years quite some time ago; At the time Madrid was a mining ghost town (almost). It had one house with electricity which a family of three and I inhabited. The rest of the town was inhabited by gay hippies who kind of ran it from the shacks that had withstood the towns ghosthood. The town also had a small general store and wonderful old bar run by folks from Santa Fe.

 

Any thread that starts with cables and soon veers OT is a good thread in my book. Thank you Chris for letting it live.

 

Chris

[LCC0256]

 

Jud: It is true that packaging and assessment fees exacerbated the conditions for the eventual mortgage collapse. It is true that economic downturn (that is another issue we could debate the CAUSE of the "downturn") caused many people not to be able to pay back those mortgages. It is true that the leverage (negative) you describe (Which by the way was due to the "artificial" growth and valuation of real property during this time) was also both a cause and effect of this collapse. It is true that the improperly designed portfolios (couched in terms of risk assessment) of mortgages were created and marketed by those whose job it is to "maintain a market" for mortgages. What you are incorrect about was the the level at which the federal government intensified it's strong arm coercive powers to force lenders to INITIALLY make an INORDINATE AMOUNT (historically speaking) of loans that they WOULD NOT have made. That sir is an indisputable fact. You fail to mention that in the US the mortgage industry is arguably one of the single most "regulated" sectors of the economy. This collapse was not because there was too little regulation of the mortgage industry. Quite the opposite is true.

This is not a socialist democrat or republican issue. As you point out both parties have equally pursued "home ownership" as a "right" for all Americans for many many decades now. I excerpt an article from Forbes Magazine written by Mr. Yaron Brook who was at the time Director of the Ayn Rand Institute. (below) Of course there are always going to be disagreements surrounding how much control the government should have on any part of the economy. But to argue that a lack of regulation led to the mortgage crisis is (when the government basically controls both the supply and the demand for those mortgages) simply not true.

 

 

 

The financial peril of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac –the government-sponsored, government-regulated mortgage giants regarded as instrumental in solving the nation’s mortgage market problems–has one benefit. It should help expose the lie that today’s financial problems are the result of an insufficiently regulated market.

For too long, the refrain has gone, Congress and the administration have been asleep at the wheel when they should have been steering the economy by expanding government control over the housing and financial markets. Economist Paul Krugman slams the administration’s “free-market ideology”; he urges Bush to “reverse course now” and “seek expanded regulation.”

All this overlooks a crucial fact: There has been no free market in housing or finance. Government has long exercised massive control over the housing and financial markets–including its creation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (which have now amassed $5 trillion in liabilities)–leading to many of the problems being blamed on the free market today.

Consider the low lending standards that were a significant component of the mortgage crisis. Lenders made millions of loans to borrowers who, under normal market conditions, weren’t able to pay them off. These decisions have cost lenders, especially leading financial institutions, tens of billions of dollars.

It is popular to take low lending standards as proof that the free market has failed, that the system that is supposed to reward productive behavior and punish unproductive behavior has failed to do so. Yet this claim ignores that for years irrational lending standards have been forced on lenders by the federal Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) and rewarded (at taxpayers’ expense) by multiple government bodies.

The CRA forces banks to make loans in poor communities, loans that banks may otherwise reject as financially unsound. Under the CRA, banks must convince a set of bureaucracies that they are not engaging in discrimination, a charge that the act encourages any CRA-recognized community group to bring forward. Otherwise, any merger or expansion the banks attempt will likely be denied. But what counts as discrimination?

According to one enforcement agency, “discrimination exists when a lender’s underwriting policies contain arbitrary or outdated criteria that effectively disqualify many urban or lower-income minority applicants.” Note that these “arbitrary or outdated criteria” include most of the essentials of responsible lending: income level, income verification, credit history and savings history–the very factors lenders are now being criticized for ignoring.

The government has promoted bad loans not just through the stick of the CRA but through the carrot of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which purchase, securitize and guarantee loans made by lenders and whose debt is itself implicitly guaranteed by the federal government. This setup created an easy, artificial profit opportunity for lenders to wrap up bundles of subprime loans and sell them to a government-backed buyer whose primary mandate was to “promote homeownership,” not to apply sound lending standards.

Of course, lenders not only sold billions of dollars in suspect loans to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, contributing to their present debacle, they also retained some subprime loans themselves and sold others to Wall Street–leading to the huge banking losses we have been witnessing for months. Is this, then, a free market failure? Again, no.

In a free market, lending large amounts of money to low-income, low-credit borrowers with no down payment would quickly prove disastrous. But the Federal Reserve Board’s inflationary policy of artificially low interest rates made investing in subprime loans extraordinarily profitable. Subprime borrowers who would normally not be able to pay off their expensive houses could do so, thanks to payments that plummeted along with Fed rates. And the inflationary housing boom meant homeowners rarely defaulted; so long as housing prices went up, even the worst-credit borrowers could always sell or refinance.

Thus, Fed policy turned dubious investments into fabulous successes. Bankers who made the deals lured investors and were showered with bonuses. Concerns about the possibility of mass defaults and foreclosures were assuaged by an administration whose president declared: “We want everybody in America to own their own home.”

Further promoting a sense of security, every major financial institution in America–both commercial banks and investment banks–was implicitly protected by the quasi-official policy of “too big to fail.” The “too big to fail” doctrine holds that, when they risk insolvency, large financial institutions (like Countrywide or Bear Stearns) must be bailed out through a network of government bodies including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Home Loan Banks and the Federal Reserve.

All of these government factors contributed to creating a situation in which millions of people were buying homes they could not afford, in which the participants experienced the illusion of prosperity, in which billions upon billions of dollars were going into bad investments. Eventually the bubble burst; the rest is history.

Given that our government was behind the wheel, influencing every aspect of the mortgage crisis, it is absurd to call today’s situation the result of insufficient regulation.

We do not need more regulation or economic “steering”–laws or bureaucrats dictating to financiers and investors the kind of innovation they may or may not engage in. If that were the solution to economic problems, then Hugo Chavez would preside over the world’s healthiest economy in Venezuela. What we need to do is remove the government’s power to coerce, bribe, reward and bail out irrational decisions. The unfree market has failed. It’s time for a truly free market.

Yaron Brook is managing director of BH Equity Research and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute.

[sandyk]

What we need to do is remove the government’s power to coerce, bribe, reward and bail out irrational decisions. The unfree market has failed. It’s time for a truly free market.

It sounds a little like you may have a personal vested interest in such an outcome ?

Perhaps a stockbroker, banker, real estate agent or similar profession ?

[PopPop]

I think we should just tear up the constitution completely and return to frontier justice and survival of the fittest.

[jabbr]

I think we should just tear up the constitution completely and return to frontier justice and survival of the fittest.

 

Exactly! The USA is a nation of laws, whether you like them or not. I will take the Supreme Court as a final arbiter of what the Constitution and Amendments say rather than a King or Overlord any day. Are we perfect? Hardly but better imperfect than a serf or slave or dead. Besides, cigarettes kill more Americans every year than the sum total of Al Queda/ISIS etc. I value preserving out Bill of Rights over preserving a few lives every year. That said people who refuse to vaccinate their children should be forcibly sterilized. Okay I'm not perfect... but people who waste money on expensive AC cables should be allowed to live, so maybe I'm OK after all...

[PopPop]

Some of the laws make sense to me and I like them. Others, not so much. But hey, I'm only one guy. I support people who are consistent with my sensibilities and expect that others do the same.

[tranz]

... return to frontier justice and survival of the fittest.

 

Is that not already the case?

 

Ever seen the shanty towns in most major US cities? Ever driven through through downtown Detroit, Oakland, Chicago or Los Angeles, especially at night?

[Priaptor]

Exactly! The USA is a nation of laws, whether you like them or not. I will take the Supreme Court as a final arbiter of what the Constitution and Amendments say rather than a King or Overlord any day. Are we perfect? Hardly but better imperfect than a serf or slave or dead. Besides, cigarettes kill more Americans every year than the sum total of Al Queda/ISIS etc. I value preserving out Bill of Rights over preserving a few lives every year. That said people who refuse to vaccinate their children should be forcibly sterilized. Okay I'm not perfect... but people who waste money on expensive AC cables should be allowed to live, so maybe I'm OK after all...

 

A little bit of a straw man to throw cigarettes and vaccinations into the terrorist domain.

 

As a conservative libertarian, my view is you want to smoke be my guest. Just not around me and I don't want to foot the bill for you when you get sick. Truth is some very good studies showing smokers save the overall cost to the healthcare system because they die earlier and quicker but I digress.

 

Vaccinations is different entirely. It is a parent making a crappy choice for their child that will have adverse effects not just on their innocent child but on other innocent kids and adults as well.

 

You don't care about terrorist until it is you or one of your family.

 

You will take SCOTUS as the final arbiter? That's nice as I hate to tell you hey ARE the final arbiter. Having said that, without repeating, SCOTUS hardly interprets what is written and amended anymore so it has become a legislative body as to how they want to interpret.

[PopPop]

Does East St. Louis count, been there numerous times? Sure there are pockets of lawlessness throughout the US but 99.5 percent of Americans still respect the democracy and have to wrangle with the constitution.

[tranz]

Does East St. Louis count, been there numerous times? Sure there are pockets of lawlessness throughout the US but 99.5 percent of Americans still respect the democracy and have to wrangle with the constitution.

 

Fair enough. The sheer volume and randomness of gun violence in the US scares the piss out of me.

[Priaptor]

Fair enough. The sheer volume and randomness of gun violence in the US scares the piss out of me.

 

"Randomness"

 

Surely you joke, at least I hope.

 

Give me a map and I can point to you with a much higher probability, probably greater than 90% which is much higher than you could ever discern the differences between DACS, where the gun violence is going to take place here in the states.

 

By the way we are circling back to the Constitution, SCOTUS and guns.

 

How about Medical Errors and all the deaths it causes (just below heart disease and cancer "they claim")and the simpleton opinion piece in the WSJ today written by A LAWYER.

[PopPop]

Fair enough. The sheer volume and randomness of gun violence in the US scares the piss out of me.

 

No one is immune to risk but I am in a fortunate place and gun violence isn't an every day concern. We spend a lot of time worrying about being attacked by bad guys with guns but the truth about gun violence is that most of it isn't as random as we think. It's self inflicted or a crime of passion between spouses or family members.

[jabbr]

A little bit of a straw man to throw cigarettes and vaccinations into the terrorist domain.

As a conservative libertarian, my view is you want to smoke be my guest. Just not around me and I don't want to foot the bill for you when you get sick. Truth is some very good studies showing smokers save the overall cost to the healthcare system because they die earlier and quicker but I digress.

yes. and casino's are a tax on stupidity. but really marijuana and mushrooms should be entirely legal (while not driving).

Vaccinations is different entirely. It is a parent making a crappy choice for their child that will have adverse effects not just on their innocent child but on other innocent kids and adults as well.

 

You don't care about terrorist until it is you or one of your family.

I *do* care of course but statistically the chance of being killed by a terrorist is vanishingly small. If you are moving to Montana you need to be more worried about bears. I care about our core American principles more. Banning all Muslims is not acceptable nor justified. This horrifies me. You could make the same argument about one of your family getting killed by a gun. The same logic should be applied.

[PopPop]

 

yes. and casino's are a tax on stupidity. but really marijuana and mushrooms should be entirely legal (while not driving).

 

....

.

 

I'm eager to see how highway safety changes in states that legalize marijuana. It's not easy to tie use to impairment with marijuana as it is with alcohol.

[Allan F]

The Ayn Rand Institute. Now that's where we are going to get a truly objective analysis of the financial crisis of 2008 and the economic system that allowed it to happen! An organization dedicated to the philosophy of Ayn Rand, who worshiped at the throne of laissez-faire capitalism That is akin to looking to the National Rifle Association for an objective analysis of the system of gun sales and ownership in America.