bigmoney

In Defense of Non-Defense

defense (or offense) spending is game theory. Sometimes defense spending is a big waste. Other times, armies march, empires grow, and the winners grows richer, or even winner take all.

The Unemployment Rigidity Premium

I recall graduating with a degree in engineering, and when interviewing, they would ask what experience I had. I was strongly tempted to retort "what experience do you think I have?"

Top 10 Online Trading Destinations: May 2009

are there discount brokers that provide a Windows client program to do trading? The web interfaces are ok, but they are a bit slow and tedious for my taste.

Porsche Still Scrambling to Raise Cash

I'd buy a Porsche if I could drive it proper. However, most of my time behind the wheel is waiting at red lights, stop & go traffic, or cursing erratic drivers people yapping on the cell phone. When not driving, my car cooks in the hot sun. My 10 year old clunker fits the bill perfectly.

Pricing Oil in Big Macs

>> Aside from the labor to assemble the burgers, Big Macs are essentially made from oil & gas.

indeed. I'd like to see an equivalent measured in a pure organic hamburger, with the entire production and distribution chain using American citizen labor. Using genetically modified ingredients, chemical fertilizers, along illegal alien labor is gaming the system, and hides inflation. Our grandparents enjoyed much higher quality foods, assuming they could afford it.

SolarWinds Raises $104 Million, Trades Higher After IPO

the network management space can be tricky and doesn't seem to evolve as fast as I would expect. Some products are good in terms of function and scalability, but very expensive and complicated. Software tends to get gobbled up by larger and larger companies, until some mega-corp owns it, and it stagnates.

There are also open source offerings, and I have seen these put to good use, but they usually require unix / linux trained staff that can deploy and maintain them.

Solarwinds definitely fills a price / performance niche, with a minimal learning curve, and in some areas, its products can do clever things that even the uber-expensive can't do very well.

America's Healthcare Debate

>> Government Does Nothing Well.

maybe so, but if the bulk of medical spending is post-65, that means the bulk of medical care is already "government", and I don't know of very many people who opt out of government Medicare / Medicaid (or military VA), to get quality "free market" medical care.

big corporate funded medical insurance also dramatically distorts "free market" medical care, although maybe not as much as Medicare.

recently asthma inhalers were required to change their propellant to comply with ozone lawe. Well, just that alone was enough to allow Big Pharma to re-certify patents for the next couple of decades. So an asthma inhaler that was $10 for generic, is now back up to $75, and probably more for cash payers. The medicine itself (albuterol) is several decades old.

Also, for those who are believers in "free market" medical care, just trying calling a specialist, and asking them how much a visit costs. You will almost certainly get a mealy-mouthed "it depends", which is something like what you would expect with third world racketeers, such as Mexican Police.

Option ARMs: Why They're Different

a family interested in $1500/mo house payment is probably earning something less that $80k/year. A reset to $3800 would consume nearly all available income, which in a majority of cases, is probably dual income.

Unless employer's are prepared to dramatically ramp up salaries, housing prices need to sag back down to 3x income.

Amazon Opens Kindle to Bloggers, But Will Readers Want to Pay?

so if I spool up the seekingalpha RSS on a Kindle, I will have to pay $2/month? The HORROR !

Oil ETFs: Texas Tea or Empty Well?

I did some of the commodity ETF's last year, and discovered at tax time, they increased the complexity of my tax return with an annoying Schedule K-1, or something like that. It was time consuming getting the data into Turbotax.

TV Networks Choose Not to Report Viewer Decline

I am reading seekingalpha articles instead of watching TV.

iShares 401(k) Program Helps ETFs Break into Retirement Market

sounds good to me. My (mega-corp) 401k has some expensive name brand mutual funds, along with some expensive "proprietary" mutual funds that model "some other fund". There are a few index funds, but not enough to diversify.

The Impending Mother of All Oil Shocks

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One Trillion Dollar Commercial Real Estate Time Bomb Now Ticking

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Real Estate: Rentals and Sales Prices Out of Sync

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