Financial topics

[Higgenbotham]

Consumer Metrics Indexes going to new lows.

http://www.consumerindexes.com/

[OLD1953]

Sounds very familiar to me, as my wife essentially refused to participate in certain schemes involving home equity loans and was fired for ginned up reasons. She called the ombudsman and blew the whistle on the whole mess, which started an investigation that culminated in the bank in question selling a huge number of loans at 10% on the dollar, and retreating from being a large national bank to a regional state bank. But they are STILL solvent, and they'd very likely be in that dead banks pile if she hadn't made that call, at least IMHO.

[Higgenbotham]

Sounds very familiar to me, as my wife essentially refused to participate in certain schemes involving home equity loans and was fired for ginned up reasons.

It was familiar to me for a different reason. The description in the first video of how the SEC operates describes how a state environmental agency I worked in operates. That's another part of the pervasive generational aspect. Seeing exactly how a corrupt government agency operates allowed me to piece together likely scenarios in the financial area. Until I was on the inside of a government regulatory agency it was impossible for me to understand what corruption really is and how corrosive it is. I originally took the job because I thought it was important to experience a government regulatory agency first hand. Despite all that I learned and the benefits of learning it, I really wish I hadn't.

[vincecate]

The description in the first video of how the SEC operates describes how a state environmental agency I worked in operates. That's another part of the pervasive generational aspect. Seeing exactly how a corrupt government agency operates allowed me to piece together likely scenarios in the financial area. Until I was on the inside of a government regulatory agency it was impossible for me to understand what corruption really is and how corrosive it is. I originally took the job because I thought it was important to experience a government regulatory agency first hand. Despite all that I learned and the benefits of learning it, I really wish I hadn't.

About 20 years ago there was a company that claimed to have a "nuclear battery" that generated electricity from the radioactive decay of Strontium-90. They claimed their prototype got some amount of electricity from some amount of strontium-90. I don't remember the exact numbers, something like 75 watts from 10 grams. I was in grad school and went down to the library and worked through the units conversion to see how much energy in watts was given off by 10 grams of strontium-90. Start out with so many decays per second per gram with so many million electron volts energy on each one and keep converting things till you get watts for the right number of grams. Turned out that even with 100 percent efficiency in energy conversion (which is clearly not going to happen) you could get like 1/8th the power they claimed. I contacted the Nuclear expert the company claimed had verified their work and he said he did not in any way endorse these claims and that I was right it could never produce that kind of power. The company had raised like $20 million using this bogus claim that could be shown bogus with 5 minutes with a CRC. I contacted the SEC and a reporter at the New York times. Basically nothing ever happened. The stock was under $5 so nobody could make any money shorting it and then exposing it (SEC had rules against shorting stocks under $5). It was a real eye opener to me.

[OLD1953]

That's the trouble with penny stocks, many/most of them are based on fraud.

Why is the market staying up? Easy answer:

http://www2.standardandpoors.com/spf/pd ... YBACKS.pdf

and they didn't stop there:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 06772.html

http://seekingalpha.com/article/262777- ... confidence

IOW, a decision has been made to take shares off the table, and also to replace high value/high class shares with lower value/lower class shares.

[SovietofWashington]

a CRC.

Ha, ha...Vince shows his age by reference to a CRC handbook. I bet few under 30 has ever used one (I can guarantee neither of my kids [graduating college with degrees in Bio and Civil Engineering respectively in June] have ever used one despite having both Math Tables and Chemistry/Physics handbooks around the house). Easier to twitter <sigh>.

[Higgenbotham]

a CRC.

Ha, ha...Vince shows his age by reference to a CRC handbook. I bet few under 30 has ever used one (I can guarantee neither of my kids [graduating college with degrees in Bio and Civil Engineering respectively in June] have ever used one despite having both Math Tables and Chemistry/Physics handbooks around the house). Easier to twitter <sigh>.

Funny, there's a CRC Handbook about 2 feet from my head right now...

[vincecate]

Funny, there's a CRC Handbook about 2 feet from my head right now...

Mine is about 20 feet away. Back then I had to go to the library because a computer science guy does not really need to own a CRC.

[John]

Funny, there's a CRC Handbook about 2 feet from my head right now...

Mine is about 20 feet away. Back then I had to go to the library because a computer science guy does not really need to own a CRC.

I gave mine to my son when he went to college. I don't think
he ever opened it, however.

John

[Jack Edwards]

I gave mine to my son when he went to college. I don't think
he ever opened it, however.

John

Mine is still one of the few textbooks I keep at work. Haven't opened it in years. Funny... I used to randomly read in there. I thought it was cool that I had a reference book that told me what the mass of Pluto was. How times have changed!

20 years ago, I used to take my wife on dates to the public library. We would just research random stuff. Now we sit on the couch together with laptops instead.

My son, doesn't bother keeping any of his college textbooks, and does everything with pdf's. To me, there just isn't anything like having the physical book to refer to though.

Jack