Benicio Del Toro and people who wear wear Che t-shirts are fools.
Why Benicio Del Toro is a fool
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Monthly Archives: December 2008
Apropos of nothing–Shiprock
Poor credit risks remain poor credit risks, even after you give them a free pony
I can’t figure out why this is shocking:
Recent data suggests that many borrowers who received help with mortgage modifications earlier this year tended to re-default on their payments, a top U.S. banking regulator said on Monday.
"The results, I confess, were somewhat surprising, and not in a good way," said John Dugan, head of the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, in prepared remarks for a U.S. housing forum.
"Put simply, it shows that over half of mortgage modifications seemed not to be working after six months," he said.
I’m shocked that the head of the U.S. Office of the Comptroller is surprised. Why is he surprised. The vast majority of people who are defaulting on their loans are defaulting for a reason—they shouldn’t have taken out the loans in the first place. Just because you give them a free pony won’t help meet their mortgage commitments down the road.
* I wish I had come up with that title myself, but I didn’t. It’s from TJIC.com.
Twitter Updates for 2008-12-09
- Contango!:
We are living in interesting times. In July, oil hit $147 a barrel. Five months later, oil prices ha.. http://tinyurl.com/6omq9x # - Lou Dobbs–master of the non-sequitur:
Tonight I listed to Lou Dobb for a few minutes just to remind mysel.. http://tinyurl.com/5t37zh # - Jeremy Clarkson reviews the Ford Fiesta: Make sure to watch the chase which starts at minute 4 or so. http://tinyurl.com/5qyhge #
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Jeremy Clarkson reviews the Ford Fiesta
Make sure to watch the chase which starts at minute 4 or so.
Lou Dobbs–master of the non-sequitur
Tonight I listed to Lou Dobb for a few minutes just to remind myself why I dislike him. The story I heard was really two stories, but Lou thought it was one story. The first story was about how Mexico’s drug gang violence has surged, killing 5,400 people this year. The second story was the announcement of a new border crossing from Mexico to California. To Lou, and only Lou, these stories in inextricably related.
Lou is concerned about drug violence in Mexico. He’s not concerned about it from a human rights perspective, or because he cares about Mexicans, he’s concerned about it because he thinks violence in Mexico makes the border crossing less secure. And this is the Lou Dobbians non-sequitur. To make Dobb’s point he would need to show that the killing in Mexico is making America less safe. That may be true, but Dobb doesn’t bother to make this all-important link.
But this is the Dobbian logic–foreigners are bad. Thanks again Lou for reminding me why I think you are a non-thinking scumbag.
Contango!
We are living in interesting times. In July, oil hit $147 a barrel. Five months later, oil prices have dropped by $100 a barrel. Not only that, but now it is profitable for people (if they have a few hundred million or a billion laying around to buy crude at today’s spot price, store it for a year, and lock in a profit by selling it forward. Platt’s explains the scheme:
the forward curve for oil is now providing a huge incentive for market participants to store oil. For example, the one-year spread between December 2008 and December 2009 crude is running about $10, and the combination of financing and storage costs aren’t enough to wipe out that profit incentive to buy oil now, sock it away for 12 months and collect the difference in price.
Apparently it is now profitable to rent supertankers and store the oil in supertankers because of the contango.
Usually the contango gets arbitraged away, but the credit crunch is keeping people on the sidelines, allowing the big boys to make money because they have billions in cash.
Obama’s EPA to charge a fee for cows’ flatulence?
I get a little amused when I read articles about a subject or issue I know about. Here’s a good example– Proposed fee on smelly cows, hogs angers farmers. It just so happens that I’ve been following the “cow flatulence” issue. The article initmates that EPA has proposed charging a fee on cow flatuence becuase cows (and hogs) emit greenhouse gases. The article says:
It would require farms or ranches with more than 25 dairy cows, 50 beef cattle or 200 hogs to pay an annual fee of about $175 for each dairy cow, $87.50 per head of beef cattle and $20 for each hog.
These numbers are completely accurate. What is slightly inaccurate is that EPA hasn’t formally announced they would charge cows this fee. EPA put out and Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. If EPA starts to regulate greenhouse gases under one section of the Clean Air Act (such as section 202 which regulates emissions from cars) they will be forced to regulate greenhouse gases from other sections as well–such as Title V. The fees talked about in this news article would be assessed under Title V. While EPA is not proposed to charge these fees, they are the unaviodable outcome of trying to regulate greenhouse gases using the Clean Air Act.
Obama’s top climate advisor has announced that his Administraiton will regulate greenhouse gases unsing the Air Act. This is utter folly. If you want to read my take on this, my comments to EPA are here.
Al Gore Isn’t Connected to Reality
When rational person watch this video, they come to two conclusions 1) there must be some kind of climate crisis and 2) this guy is bat sh*t insane.
Number 2 is undoubtedly correct–Al Gore is nuts. But we are not in a “climate crisis” we should see some serious increase in temperature. Here’s a temperature chart from the satellite data for the past 12 years:
Looking at the graph you notice that there has only been a slight increase in temperature for the past 12 years. So where’s the crisis? There was only a slight increase in global temperature (and decrease since 1998) even though worldwide carbon dioxide emissions have increased by 30%.
Al Gore wants us to ignore our domestic energy supplies because of a crisis that doesn’t exist. That doesn’t make a ton of sense.
How to build and igloo
I like how easy this Inuit, or First People, or whatever we should call these northern-dwellers, make the task of building an igloo. I’d like to build one sometime, but I’m sure it would take all day for people how aren’t pros like these guys.