DrChaos

7 Comments

    • SUV Makers Feel the Heat of Higher Oil Prices [view article]
      "bbzz24 you're an idiot. How do your landscapers get your yard done? How do your deliveries get to your house? How do your contractors get your new A/C there and installed?"

      Guess what? I've been to other countries, and they have landscapers, home deliveries and air conditioning.

      What they don't have is US-size "full-size" pickups and SUV's.

      There are plenty of 'utility' vehicles, rather like "El Camino" style smaller pickups on a car body, and occasional somewhat larger pickups. And then commercial delivery trucks.

      In reality, few of the US full-size pickup buyers (and virtulaly none of the full-size SUV buyers) actually use their trucks to their capabilities.

      Back to the USA. In 1980, cars were something like 80% of the vehicle sales, trucks/suv's 20%. Today it's like 48%-52%. So, did nobody have landscaping, construction and A/C in 1980? Obviously they did. Farmers and ranchers got the trucks they needed and life went on.

      The reality is that most (not all, but the large majority) of the demand today is spurious egoboosting and neurotic mommyism.

      [ED: Comment edited to remove abuse.]       Jul 07 12:35 AM
    • Alan Greenspan Loses His Mind [view article]
      Alan Greenspan is dumber than a bartender.

      Any bartender knows that the way to deal with an unruly drunk is to cut him off from liquidity, completely. Not raise the price of beer to everybody by 50 cents.

      The Fed didn't need to raise interest rates to deflate the obvious bubbles. It needed to 1) raise margin rates sharply in 1999-2000, 2) majorly crack down on bank underwriting & lending standards and increase capital ratios against mortgages.

      Both could have burst the bubbles, without harming the economy as a whole more than necessary.       Mar 21 04:30 PM
    • Countrywide Financial: Who Didn't See It Coming? [view article]
      “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” -Upton Sinclair

      Somehow his prescience was magically enhanced when he was in communication with his broker.

      Do you remember the summer of 2005? The New York Times Magazine (consumerist porn for rich pseudo-liberals) had a fawning, obsequious article about Bob Toll --- high-end homebuilder CEO. He went on and on about how the US and especially Toll was immune to any problems, how housing prices are bound to keep on going up, how Toll was so much stronger than the rest, with a rock and housing prices would equalize with Britain's. Remember that?

      At the same time he was unloading oodles of stock. Hundreds of millions. He (or his company) bought the sponsorship of the Metropolitan Opera broadcast---yes it's now the "Toll Brothers"---not Texaco---Metropolitan Opera Broadcast.


      Cynical "bitter renter" conspiracy theorists: 2
      Words of "Captains of the Industry" CEO's: 0
      What they got for not believing their propaganda: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$       Jul 26 01:43 PM
    • Betting On Oil? Pay Close Attention To The Facts [view article]
      Ronald Reagan abandoning price controls lead to a great drop in oil prices in early 1980's? Give me a break.

      Maybe, in US, for natural gas---which is not a world fungible commodity---it's a potential hypothesis.

      For oil, everybody is ignoring the obvious. In the early 1980's,
      Significant oil was discovered and exploited in the North Sea at maximal commercial
      production by Britain and Norway---capitalist and NATO allies. And Cantarell (the planet's second biggest oil field after Ghawar) came on line in a similar period, and the Alaskan oil was really flowing. (And there was a big recession, too). Those discoveries, plus the war in Afghanistan, helped to topple the USSR.

      Guess what? North Sea oil production, and Cantarell is crashing. Not just a modest decline but a serious crash. Oil price is marching ever up, and Russia is rising once again, and in a triumphalist and sour mood.

      All the high tech employed by Britain and Norway resulted in sucking out the oil faster, but it doesn't actually seem to get much
      more total oil!       Jun 16 08:58 PM
    • Bull Market Monetary Environment: Rising Inflation and Money Supply [view article]
      One reason is simple.

      War is inflationary. Always has been, always will be.       May 21 07:33 PM
    • Uranium Mania: Watch This Market Grow [view article]
      Cameco has sold most of their near-term future production forward at much lower prices than current spot price. May 17 09:09 PM
    • Matching Management with Culture: How the Wrong CEO Can Ruin a Company [view article]
      I seem to remember a study which showed how low-key, promoted-from-within CEOs resulted in better company performance than expensive, outside recruited flashy CEOs.

      Of course the second group got much larger options and compensation packages.

      There seems to be some kind of primitive, unintelligent apeish-genetic urge to give leadership power to the toughest, most arrogant, sounding man (and usually it is a man, not woman who is this sort).

      Of course being an asshole will be a bad "fit" for just about any corporate culture.

      Nardelli wasn't actually the real boss at GE. Perhaps his true nature was kept in check there?

      Another potentially relevant example: Microsoft seems to be doing far more poorly with the loudmouth, aggressive, and arrogant Ballmer running things versus the semi-autistic Gates.

      Five years of billions of dollars of revenue and we get Vista---mostly a downgrade from XP?

      Of course there are difficulties with industry maturity but one of Microsoft's biggest present problems, one that they never used to have, is the major exodus of many of their best technology employees---especially to Google. That's clearly a sign of spreading disease in the corporate culture.

      Microsoft Research is doing great by paying academic-style researchers more money and letting them do whatever they want. Few of their inventions have any relevance to Microsoft's products and Ballmer ignores them.       May 17 08:59 PM
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