Enjoy it while it lasts

I'm writing this so someday when we have kids we can look back an laugh. On Tuesday right after work we were feeling tired so we went to bed. We got up around 9pm, ate some cheesecake, and went back to bed for the night. It was great.

Broheim

Of all the millions of songs in the world, somehow my brother and I separately each sought and downloaded Final Countdown as our ring tone.

US federal liabilities are now 400% of GDP

THE UNITED STATES IS INSOLVENT. Some analysis on a recently released report from the US Treasury.

US Comptroller David Walker: "Despite improvement in both the fiscal year 2006 reported net operating cost and the cash-based budget deficit, the U.S. government’s total reported liabilities, net social insurance commitments, and other fiscal exposures continue to grow and now total approximately $50 trillion, representing approximately four times the Nation’s total output (GDP) in fiscal year 2006, up from about $20 trillion, or two times GDP in fiscal year 2000."

This reinforces a recession prediction.

BusinessWeek Predicts 15 Year Housing Slump

We've reached the milestone in the great US housing collapse where mainstream media is starting to report what's been obvious to some for years:

Housing: Curb Your Enthusiasm About A Recovery. Good article.

Housing booms are short and exciting. Housing busts, on the other hand, are long and painful. So don't put much faith in those oft-heard assertions that the worst is already over. Prices are likely to fall further in many markets in 2007. In some others, prices may rise, but at less than the rate of inflation. A BusinessWeek analysis of the past three decades shows that if history repeats itself, it's likely to take 15 years or more for many parts of the country to get back to their inflation-adjusted peaks.

Even if the mainstream is slow, at least it's nice to read. In contrast, leading-edge blogs generally read like barely coherent ramblings of an angry man, are as dry as the Calgary air, or both. Here's some more good readin'

Boom sparks 'rent vs. own' debate. Erick Eschker, Humboldt State University economics professor:

”I don't think we've ever seen it this bad here. Not since the Great Depression has there been such a difference between (rents and mortgages),” Eschker said. “I would be a fool to purchase a house right now, unless I could find a house at the pre-boom prices. I think we are in trouble and I'm not going to lie about it.”

Sony complains that you don't pay enough

Sony whines over HDTV price drops. 2006 was a great year for high-def television set prices. Well, if you're a consumer. Sony is worried low prices will hurt the industry. LOL. At least they're not one of the companies under investigation for LCD price fixing.

In other I-Hate-Sony news, how about that Wii? I read today that in Japan after one month of sales the Sony PlayStation 3 has already outsold the Microsoft Xbox 360 which has been on sale for over a year. OK, but everyone expected that, Japan hates the Xbox. To me the real news in that "Sony vs. Microsoft" article is near the end where they mention, almost in passing, that the Nintendo Wii sold more than both the other systems put together. In one week.

Go Mario!

US Recession. Not if, but for how long

I believe the US is heading for a recession. What's the global effect going to be, especially since the housing & credit bubble is a global phenomenon? The thing that most concerns me personally is most of my employer's revenue is in $US.

Recommended reading

A loan that'll get ugly fast. (Great article, comments here)

Every day, Will Hertzberg owns a little less of his three-bedroom house in Corona.

Interview with Paul Kasriel. (Inflation vs. prices)

If the current housing recession were to turn into a housing depression, leading to massive mortgage defaults, it could end. Alternatively, if there were a run on the dollar in the foreign exchange market, price inflation could spike up and the Fed would have no choice but to raise interest rates aggressively. Given the record leverage in the U.S. economy, the rise in interest rates would prompt large scale bankruptcies. These are the two "checkmate" scenarios that come to mind.

Buck & Housing Three Bears: Ripples, Momentum, Feedback. (A bit long, summary here)

The biggest housing bull market (12 years since 1993) will be followed by the greatest housing bear market in the modern era.

PIMCO's Gross: Rate cuts coming. (CNN Money interview with the Bond King, Bill Gross)

Once people start to believe that the Fed will have to cut interest rates in the next three to four months, the dollar's decline is going to accelerate.

It could be another one to two years before the effects of the housing bubble are unwound

And somewhat related: 10 reasons people make stupid decisions

10. We’ve come this far… (sunk cost bias) - We all know that the past is past and we can’t get back money or time that we already spent. But many people irrationally take sunk costs, time, money, or other resources which have already been spent and can't be recovered, into their decision making. Barry Schwartz from Swarthmore College, author of The Paradox of Choice, in an LA Times op-ed piece highlights examples of sunk costs used in decision making, such as how much you spent to get your car fixed last time, how long you have been dating someone, how much you invested in a stock, or how many troops have been lost in Iraq so far.

Guide to blank DVD media quality

Blank media quality guide & FAQ. A detailed list of blank DVD manufactures and brands by reliability. I've been looking for a guide of this quality ever since I burned a batch of garbage DVDs a couple years ago.

The thing that must be realized is that most media is produced by a relative small number of factories, located in several different places. These factories are mostly present in Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, China, India, some European locations. There are more, but those are the largest ones. The best media generally comes from Japan and Singapore. The worst typically comes from Taiwan or China (in stores) and Hong Kong (online).

Robotman! is Canadian?

Tee Hee, stories of our friends on the west coast dealing with real winter are always a source of amusement to us in Calgary. And when the writer of said story is the oft-hilarious Robotman, well, read on: Digging out the car.

After about five minutes of toiling away on the back window I had managed to clear off basically none of it. Frustrated, I declared on the spot that “rearward visibility is for girls” and moved around to the front of the car to try my luck there.

Jasmine's chopsticks

My sister needed a photo of the lovely chopsticks she made me.