"Bend Homeowner Holds Burglar at Gunpoint." KTVZ. 2/16/12.
Word of advice. Never burglarize the home of a guy who wears camouflage as everyday gear.
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"Could Your Habit Be a Sugar Addiction?" Bulletin. 2/16/12.
Well, as an imbiber of an eight pack of large bottles of Coke (Coke not Pepsi) per day in college -- it was also a carbonation addiction, but most of all a caffeine addiction.
It was also breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Quit cold-turkey when I quit smoking -- they went together. To this day, I tend to drink sugar free lemonade as my drink of choice.
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Lin sanity. I've always just assumed that there are tons of artists, writers, musicians, actors and athletes who just never get their chance.
Good to see it confirmed. Or bad.
Not sure which.
Even at the very junior levels of competitive skiing that I was involved in, it was obvious that some skiers were selected to get full backing from the coaches and organizations, and some weren't.
How many talented people are stalled at just below the level they would've gotten much better? Don't get me started on writing!
We'll never know, I guess.
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"Romney Targets Auto Bailouts in Michigan Battle." Bulletin, 2/16/12.
This would seem like dubious strategy to me, at least for the general election.
Considering:
"General Motors earned its largest profit ever in 2011, two years after it nearly collapsed into financial ruin." USA Today, 2/16/12.
You know, I'd like to believe that my political leanings wouldn't keep me from admitting when I'm wrong. I mean, it's human nature. But still...
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Dark Horse Comics has gotten the rights to Troll figures.
I was a troll collector when I was 11 years old, big time. Embarrassingly so.
God help me, but I'm going for this. Hey, a new fad! (every 20 years).
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An unexpected benefit of the New 52. I find myself reordering much more often, because it's easy to check check to see which issues I'm missing so far and decide how many I need to carry. I just really like the neatness of it all.
Marvel, by contrast, seems horribly complicated. Especially with their hodgepodge of restarts.
And don't get me started on their horrendously shortsighted graphic novel program. Marvel is the biggest company based solely on their comics -- but I swear that a concise, orderly, selection of graphic novels that they kept in stock, would add huge percentage points to their sales.
It's a mystery to all of us in the comics biz why they don't.
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GM was only profitable two years after because they had no debt, the debt was the reason why they were not profitable before.
The issue with GM is the nature of the bankruptcy. In a traditional bankruptcy the shareholders are wiped out and generally the debt holders get ownership of the new issued shared when the company emerges from bankruptcy (the bond holders have priority over sharegholders in the claim for assets) or they get some payout from the sale of assets if the company does not emerge, that is usually at the call of a bankruptcy judge.
So GM magically became profitable because they emerged with no debt and no debt payments. Does not say that the company will survive in that fashion because unless they have tremendously improved their operations they will eventually encounter the need to increase debt load once again and go down hill once more. They also benefited by substantial reductions in labor costs. how long those last is also an interesting question.
The problem with the GM bailout is that the normal bankruptcy process was bypassed. Instead of allowing the company to go through the normal process the government intervened paid billions of tax payer dollars that the government will most likely not recoup and the bypassed the normal rights of the debt holders. Basically the government forced the process to not only wipe out the stock owners, but also placed the debt holders behind parties that they should have been in front of in the process.
Now I expect the first thing you will say is what about the money used to bailout the banks. That moeny has been repayed to the government plus profit. At this point the taxpayer has profited from money used to bail out the banks. They are still out of money is substantially three areas:
The auto bailouts for GM and Chrysler (Fiat) where the money will not be repaid. The cost might be reduced depending upon stock price, but it will remain a negative.
AIG, an insurance company. Where also it might be reduced but will remain negative. just as a side note The Frank Dodd bill did absolutely nothing to prevent the major cause of the financial problem which is the fact that someone can buy a credit default swap on an asset that they do not have an interest in. Kind of like a bunch of people in the town deciding they want to buy fire insurance on your house, even though they do not have an interest in it. Until CDS are treated like insurance and only limited to those that have a financial interest the problem that created the financial crises will not be solved because the current process allows the cost of a failure to be far far larger then just to the owners of the asset that failed. For example if Greece goes bankrupt you not only lose the value of the Greek bonds, but you have to pay all of the people that purchased CDS's against Greek debt, even if they did not own any Greek debt and that exposure can be many times larger than the Greek debt itself.
Freddie and Fannie, the government controlled companies that will probably be the biggest losers for the taxpayers.
re: Even at the very junior levels of competitive skiing that I was involved in, it was obvious that some skiers were selected to get full backing from the coaches and organizations, and some weren't.
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Check out the book Outliers. The author, Malcolm Gladwell, found numerous various advantages exist. Here are a couple I recall. Hockey success was aided by the Canadian Junior Hockey entrance date that favored those born Jan-Mar as they were larger at the age when competing for advanced training. Bill Gates had the advantage of unlimited free computer time near his home.
Speaking if Linsanity, seems one of your locals saw it coming: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204880404577225562995441868.html "The (Bend FedEx)Delivery Guy Who Saw Jeremy Lin Coming"
RDC, Chrysler has repaid $11.2B of $12.5B, and the taxpayers own $25B+ of GM stock. It's nowhere near a total loss of funds, and a saved a hell of a lot of jobs. Michigan is actually one of the better of states right now, along with us here in Utah and of course North Dakota and its shale oil boom.
RDC-good post. Too bad the Lame Stream media can't see the bones left in the wake of Obama's sell out to the unions and the near total screwing of the bondholders of GM. Just the first of many examples of Obama's way of doing business.
I will never buy a Chrysler of GM product, even though I have a $3K credit to buy a GM car, because of the way this was done.
Forget Chrysler, they still are maintenance nightmares and will not get better under Fiat.
Also, don't forget the screwing local dealers got.
How about a third party opinion? Someone not involved in American politics, someone who was against the bailout at the time, someone who is free market?
THE ECONOMIST:
"Free-marketeers that we are, The Economist agreed with Mr Romney at the time. But we later apologised for that position. "Had the government not stepped in, GM might have restructured under normal bankruptcy procedures, without putting public money at risk", we said. But "given the panic that gripped private purse-strings...it is more likely that GM would have been liquidated, sending a cascade of destruction through the supply chain on which its rivals, too, depended." Even Ford, which avoided bankruptcy, feared the industry would collapse if GM went down. At the time that seemed like a real possibility. The credit markets were bone-dry, making the privately financed bankruptcy that Mr Romney favoured improbable."
I did mention that we got some money back, but even the most favorable estimate is that the government will never recover the investment back. It might have if it kept most of the ownership, but isn't it interesting that the government bumped the union ahead of the bond holders in getting percentage of ownership, even though existing bankruptcy law gives the bond holders the preferred position. The way the government got around that is because they said they would not provide cash to the company if the it was not handled that way and they got the bankruptcy judge to go along with it.
Duncan per the economist article.
We will never know will we?
There are a couple of key items which helps drive recoveries. First and foremost failing companies are allowed to fail, creating more opportunites for new companies to arise. Inefficient, failing companies should be allowed to fail. The bones of those companies allow more dynamic startup companies to gain access to infrastructure, markets, workers, etc. THe bones of the old provide fertilizer for the new. You have observed some of the same on a small local scale. The failure of some retail stores or dining establishs provide great facilties at low cost for new ones to be established. Should we subsidize all of those failing companies.
The government should not be picking and chosing who wins and who loses. Why isn't the government stepping in for other bankruptcies? Might it be somewhat the contribution of the UAW to the power base of the democratic party? After all the government made sure to bump them up for a major piece of ownership. The government could have clearly bailed out the firm following the normal process which would have left the government with the lion's share of the company and the creditors owning the rest of which the union would have been one of the creditors. Their ownership was way out of line with the creditor levels.
It will be interesting to see where the company sits 10 years from now and if it is back in the same money losing position.
The same actions being taken to reduce the depth of the recessions are some of the same items that will slow the rate and height of the recovery. In addition to needing to let failing companies fail, you also need to encourage people to relocate where the jobs are. Not encourage them to remain in an area where there are no jobs in a house they cannot afford.
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