2008-03-15

Smoke 'em if you got 'em

The sheriff of Oakland County, MI wants to send seized cigars to troops overseas.  Seems to be a decent thing to do.

2008-03-14

Commentary of the day

Over at CNN, Glen Beck has a great article on personal responsibility, recommend you read it:

2008-03-11

Rate Pork

I found out about this site because it had been shut down for a while.  It seems to be backup now.

www.ratemycop.com

It seems to have listings for most police officers in the USA, including their full name and department.  

So next time a cop gives you a ticket plus some attitude, tell everyone to avoid the pig here.

Market Swings, Oil, and Foreclosures

The markets were up an average of close to 4% today, one of the biggest gains in a decade.  Why did this happen and why is this a bad thing?

The gains today were due to the Federal Reserve promising to dump $200 billion into our money supply to loan to banks that are dealing with the subprime loan fallout, thereby diluting the currency in your pocket.  Imagine you have a martini, and someone says that they will turn it into 2 martinis.  You agree, so they put half of yours into another glass and fill both up with water.  This is what happened today.

Another trend to look at is the price of oil reaching a new record.  While oil is reaching a new record in dollars, this is mostly due to the dollar dropping in value to its lowest point ever against the Euro.  Why are our greenbacks worthless?  For the same reason as above, and also because of our $3 trillion war, and most recently the fed's interest rate cuts.  When the government lowers interest rates, other countries pull out of the dollar (since it pays less interest) and put it into things that they think will increase in value such as gold and oil.  

There is no oil shortage and there is no manipulation by the oil companies either.  It is simply economics at work, it is a market that has been beat up so badly by our government that it is swinging wildly to correct itself.  The only way to let it do that properly is to leave it alone.

Let people get foreclosed.
Let some banks go under.

Why should I be punished with a worthless currency because several million people bought houses they couldn't afford?  I don't own a house, and as of yet I didn't have enough money to and I understand that it would be foolish to take on an interest only loan or similar product.  Yet we are all paying for people that do.  

Leave the market alone Bernanke!

Eliot Spitzer's Problem

I don't have too much to say about this situation except that in the past he has prosecuted prostitution rings, which makes him a hypocrite.  He also happens to be one of Hillary Clinton's superdelegates.  Maybe he figured he had so much in common with Bill that he just had to support HRC.