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"HEDONICALLY ADJUST HER TASTE BUDS...." CAN YOU BLAME HER?
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My dad was worth over a million bucks driving a 15 year old Honda with a broken tail light when he passed away. Now obviously he could afford a new car and certainly could afford the tail light. But he was so incensed with what the dealership wanted for a tail light that he just got some red cellophane and taped over it.
That's exactly how I feel when I shop with her at the market. She's very lucky that she has REALLY bad math skills and yet manages to make a very healthy income. So she can't see through the gimmicks and rackets they run at her with packaging and marketing of the fancy, schmantzy stuff she like to eat.
I don't blame her but out of spite I won't pay certain prices that are blatant rip-off. We find somewhere else or something else to substitute. She's OK with that to a point.
I don't expect these low natural gas prices to hold up.
If you adjust them for REAL inflation-----shadowstats.com and not the BS from the BLS it's scary how cheap it's coming at us.
Something has to frack, I mean crack. Either the oil price and the rest of the economy deflate to meet low NG prices or for some reason "no one could have ever predicted" NG prices bounce back to more in line with the historical range with regard to it's price ratio with crude oil.
One bit of anecdotal good news on the inflation front. California is heavily reliant on natural gas for electricity and heating. So I can see reductions in both my home heating and electricity bills from the natural gas price imploding.
It's remarkable in that it's about the ONLY bill I pay monthly/weekly/quarterly that's not leaping and bounding over what Uncle Ben claims is the current rate of inflation.
Fruits, vegetables and meats are wreaking havoc on the checkbook!
My wife refuses to hedonically adjust her taste buds.
This variant was famously used in the 1976 film, Network. Another derivative form is "What's that got to do with the price of beans in Albuquerque?"
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What%27s_that_got_to_do_with_the...%3F
Gentle Ben any relation to Uncle Ben?
http://tfc-charts.w2d.com/chart/RI/M
remember the expression------"what's that got to do with the price of rice in China?"
Now we know.
Yes, his estimate for plugging the Volt in at home is exaggerated by a factor of about ten. But his illustration of the stupidity of THIS electric vehicle was based on the 10 hour downtime to recharge on a cross country road trip. So in his example one would need to use the current rates for a charge at the roadside charging stations.
Are they free?
Are they closer to $1.16 than .116?
Maybe there's your confounding data point right there.
If I were strongly arguing a point one way or the other I'm sure a few clicks and a few minutes of research would answer those questions. So this is either a corrupt/biased "opinion" piece or an ignoramus who doesn't think things through before spouting opinions.
The reality is that you're NOT going to stop and recharge when this car goes long distance because you will obviously need to rely on the gasoline source of energy.
Heads they win. Tails we lose.
The S&P futures (5-min) look like Charlie Brown on third base looking to steal home plate.
"First I'll dance around to make the pitcher nervous."
Uh oh.......here he goes!
Sent some money to Suzy's bank, to pay the monthly bills. I have no bank, nor will I ever have one. So there!
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Ha! I say to you lee
Ha!
I hope they continue tracking this "index" because I'm dieing to see how much laughter there was very specifically around March 9, 2009.
"The middle class is defined as those between the 30th and 70th income percentile"
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$54K, the low end of that income spectrum was a GREAT income not long ago. Now it's borderline lower class. Mainly that's attributable to the inflation in energy, health care, higher education, food and housing that your government pretends never happened. But another great factor is simple supply and demand for blue collar labor and much of the white collar work force as well.
So while families NEED to make much more than that to live decently in New York City, San Francisco, Chicago and the other expensive locals our economy requires fewer and fewer workers with the skills, education and experience to earn over a thousand bucks a week.
It's kind of a paradox of modern technology, robotics, industrialization and productivity.
Or it could be all be a grand conspiracy of the Bilderbergs, Illuminati, Jews, Ancient Aliens, Free Masons.................to enslave the population and create the New World Order.
What do I know?
George Orwell in his "1984" got it right, but even he couldn't imagine the extent to which it would go. Scary. Rob a convenience store and you're on camera. Run a stop sign and you're nailed. I'm not leaving my home.
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It's not like the good old days.
Used to be we'd have no trouble disposing of the bodies. Now we've got to be all high tech. Three steps ahead and everything, don't cha know.
I tend to agree with pretty much everything you wrote.
IMO, a lot of these inexplicable market moves we have seen in the last few months are a result of the instability in the currency and the overall economy, and that is why the moves are across the board, and not just particular sectors or individual stocks.
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It's not inexplicable--------I think you just explained it quite well and I agree. The robots key off currency, bond and commodities. Stocks are just the tail of the dog being dragged around.
The only thing I might contend with is the term "instability" with regard to the overall economy. It implies that the economy is one day in "recovery" and then sudden crises emerge that challenge that status. I tend to believe the recovery never happened, is not happening other than some degree of matters not getting severely worse at a more rapid rate. That's not my idea of a recovery.
Six Waltons Have More Wealth Than the Bottom 30 % of Americans
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For those who may not bother to read the rest of the article. The main gist of it is that 25% of Amercicans have ZERO or a negative net worth. So anyone with two nickles to rub together has more wealth than the bottom 25%
Here's another version of that headline;
Three Skono4 Family Members Have More Wealth Than the Bottom 25% of Americans----------Well, Two For Sure.
leaps and bounds
Couldn't help but think back on this when I saw this map.
http://www.therightperspective.org/2011/12/10/new-jersey-map-goes-viral/
Oil over $100..................
I don't think that's a good thing.
In a nutshell:
The Central State has been co-opted or captured by concentrations of private wealth and power to limit competition and divert the nation’s surplus to Elites within the key industries of finance, health care, education, government, and national security. The rising friction within these vast systems is distributed over the entire economy via cartels and taxes, raising costs in every sector and lowering the nation’s productivity.
As a result of central State intervention and politically expedient controls, the prices charged for these services are “sticky,” meaning there is little to no market pressure to lower prices, as competition has been largely eliminated by collusion, cartels, and/or government control.
At some point, these top-heavy, protected industries will experience a “stick/slip” event in which their fixed pricing and funding will collapse once the dwindling productive economy can no longer support this enormous dead weight of unproductive friction.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-future-jobs
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It's hard for me to fathom the U.S. economy, investments of any sort or even short term trading without this critical understanding. So many people I speak to fail to grasp the significance of our "captured" government and how it pervades every aspect of our society. What everyone, even the dullest brains out there seem to understand though is that nothing out there can remotely be considered "safe" in the long term.
Trade on.
PS Just kidding. I grew up in N.J. -- the nice part!
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The nice part of New Jersey?
Where's that, Connecticut?
The Super Committee is at Zeev's.
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Super Committees are much more prestigious and effective than a Blue Ribbon Panel..........as long as no one tosses any Kryptonite into the room. I believe this recent Congressional Super Committee assembled their high ranking members atop a mountain of Kryptonite.
Mount Washington DC.
Yeah, blood in the streets over $5 a month debit charges when Americans stood by whilst...............
Let's get real.
It's a no brainer that just like airlines, hardware stores, grocery stores, auto insurance, prescription drugs, cable TV, defense contractors and any other major industry you can think of the principals sat down somewhere discreet and colluded to jam this price increase down the throats of the middle class consumer.
Thank you sir, may I have another!
"You have to be fully asleep to experience it. "
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........or drop two hits of acid.
he told me, "Whatever you do, don't take two of THESE."
Dream On.
if you worked for the money, paid taxes on it, you should be able to keep that money and the money you make from that money.
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It's a minority of people in this country nowadays that do any actual physical work. I forget the number I heard precisely but I think it was less than a third. The majority push a pencil, shuffle papers, talk on the phone or push buttons on keyboard. How can you tax a factory worker, truck driver, school teacher or carpenter on their sweat and give the hedge fund manager a free ride? I don't care if he holds the stock, commodity, real estate, futures contract or option for five minutes or five years.
It's not healthy to structure our economy this way---------let alone unfair.
"The capital gains tax is almost always a tax on income that was already taxed"
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OK, I understand that we have investment accounts that can be comprised of after tax money. But I'm never taxed on the original investment capital in that sort of account, only on any profit generated from a sale.
How could I have already paid taxes on a profit from a trade before I made the transaction?
Gasoline still costs around a dime a gallon?????............Yup, but only if you have a dime made of ~90% silver.
------credit to Ron Paul out of the GOP "debates."
lee, consider yourself on report.
I've tried to make some allowances given your long history with Zeev's board here and all but there's just no excuse for working on Labor Day. It's an affront to the working man. As a blue collar working class stiff I am personally insulted by you flipping Nq's, Es's and YM's on such a holy day.
Normally holidays are double time. Labor Day is triple time and you have to get the express written consent of the Commissioner.
That means going straight over Obama's and Hillary's head to the REAL leaders of our New World Order.
Don't push you luck buddy.
December gold contract +$55
Who's winning today?
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Smart money is always winning.
"Things made in the U.S.A. still dominate the American marketplace, according to a new study by economists at the San Francisco Federal Reserve."
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"Things made in the U.S.A"????
So then they include "services" and use a number like 85% to totally misrepresent the economy, manufacturing, jobs picture, trade deficit and the whole issue of Made in America?
Hard to see this as anything but slanted journalism. Worse part is I get the impression that the author, editor and entire "journalism" trade swallows this nonsense so eagerly we can't even call them corrupt.
Let's call them the Stepford Wives of financial journalism.
Short selling in theory is healthy for free, fair and transparent markets.
Anyone know if such a market ever existed?
That's pretty sound logic. I'd either go that way or perhaps farmland, bulk dry goods, ammo and precious metals.
not frozen but running slow
The 800+ billion in "stimulus" went straight to the banks. The thinking; give the banks massive liquidity and they'll lend to businesses and individuals to ignite economic activity.
Big mistake. Give a banker a buck and he'll put it in his pocket.
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They used that as a very temporary stopgap method of papering over the Black Hole on Wall Street so the institutions could open their doors Monday morning and pretend to be solvent.
There were never any delusions at the tippy top of our empire that those "bailouts" could put a dent in the greater collapse. Certainly no bit of that in any way was intended to be circulated out to small business and working class families regardless how they sold the legislation to Joe the Plumber.
But indirectly by saving the banks, brokers, Fannie, Freddie, the insurance industry, pension funds, mutual funds, General Motors...... the illusion of financial solvency remains.
S&P downgrade is a crack in the wall that enable some to peer through the illusion.
Not very helpful to the Emperor. Hey, how about those new clothes he's wearing? Pretty spiffy indeed.
$SPX -6.66% for the day?
REALLY!!!???
$SPX crash low in March '09------666
Just sayin'