Cap'n Arbyte's BlogProcapitalist blogging with a swashbuckling sense of humor.Profile in Irresponsibility- March 29, 2008 I saw this story on cnn.com's front page a few days ago but had been too busy to comment on it until now. It's an anecdote of a family under sudden financial stress: When she was laid off in February, Patricia Guerrero was making $70,000 a year. Weeks later, with bills piling up and in need of food for her family, this middle-class mother did something she never thought she would do: She went to a food bank. I question the journalistic value of publishing stories like this for a national...http://arbyte.us/blog_archive/2008/03/Profile_in_Irresponsibility.html A Reisman Must-Read- March 26, 2008 Professor of economics George Reisman has penned a must-read article about the credit crunch. It is long but absolutely worth your time. Plus, he once again makes the case for gold: Despite the certainty that a proposal of this kind will be almost completely ignored and has virtually no chance of being enacted in the foreseeable future, it still must be made. This is because the most fundamental and important consideration is not what people are willing to accept or reject at the moment but..http://arbyte.us/blog_archive/2008/03/Reisman_Must_Read.html Does it Matter Where I Buy Gasoline- March 20, 2008 A reader forwarded me a letter encouraging people to buy gasoline only from companies that don't import oil from the Middle East or from Venezuela, for the stated purpose of sending a financialpolitical statement to those regimes, many of which are anti-American. Would following that advice hurt those countries Is it a good idea The short answers are "yes" and "no". The reasoning behind both answers is the same: Following the advice would make all gasoline more expensive. The data about...http://arbyte.us/blog_archive/2008/03/Where_Buy_Gas.html I Shoulda Been There- March 18, 2008 On St. Patrick's Day my parents went to see Wylde Nept in concert at 3rd Street Live in Cedar Rapids. They sent me this photo and remarked "I'll bet you are GREEN with envy": Yes, I am. I have all their CDs — and listen to them more often than anything else in my car — but have never had the pleasure of hearing them live, because I live way out here in Oregon. © Kyle Markley — Posted 2008-03-18 04:39:03 UTC — permalink …http://arbyte.us/blog_archive/2008/03/Shoulda_Been_There.html Panic!- March 17, 2008 Is it time to panic yet We're getting there. All this financial calamity makes me giddy. Sometimes I wonder whether that's healthy… JP Morgan made a deal to buy Bear Stearns for a mere $2share. Bear Stearns closed at $30 on Friday… and $57 on Thursday. JPMorgan's acquisition of Bear Stearns represents roughly 1 percent of what the investment bank was worth just 16 days ago. It marked a 93.3 percent discount to Bear Stearns' market capitalization as of Friday, and roughly a...http://arbyte.us/blog_archive/2008/03/Panic.html Good Riddance- March 11, 2008 I'm shocked, shocked to learn that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was caught doing something illegal. Prostitution, of course, ought to be legal. (He says as if that's not controversial at all.) While ordinarily I would lament someone's career being ruined by doing things that should be legal, in Eliot Spitzer's case I am happy to see this thug who has done great damage get a dose of his own medicine. Also, it seems that he will actually be charged for some kind of payment structuring...http://arbyte.us/blog_archive/2008/03/Good_Riddance.html No More 0% Fun- March 7, 2008 Longtime readers know that for the past several years I've been taking advantage of 0%-introductory-rate credit cards to hold a large balance paying no interest, while having the proceeds in a high-yield savings account, earning a 4-5% return with almost no risk. I'm stopping. The credit crunch that began roiling the secondary mortgage market last year has rippled into consumer credit cards. The lucrative 0% offers (those with caps on balance transfer fees) have dried up. I still got such...http://arbyte.us/blog_archive/2008/03/No_More_0pct_Fun.html |