OT: That didn't take very long!

[Rick C]

On Tuesday, June 18, 2019 at 1:41:08 PM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:

On 18/06/19 15:40, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 18 Jun 2019 13:19:31 +0100, Tom Gardner <spamjunk@blueyonder.co..uk
wrote:

On 18/06/19 04:53, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 18 Jun 2019 01:51:43 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:


Capitalists /did/ wreck the economy.

Is the economy wrecked? I hadn't noticed. Which Capitalists did that?

Didn't you notice the 2007 crash? Many people did, and many are still
suffering from the consequences.


That was mostly a real estate bubble with a lot of paper profits and paper
losses.

Yup. Traditional capitalist speculation at work.


It was driven by Fanny and Freddy here, quasi-government entities. They
encouraged banks to lend, so the banks did. Capitalist banks never would have
made the insane loans that they did if they couldn't hand off the rotten
packages to the government.

Yup. That is indeed what the capitalists did, and how
the capitalists screwed the economy and us and our
children.

Not communists. Not socialists. Capitalists.

As usual Larkin has no knowledge of the facts. Freddie and Fanny were middle men selling the securities on the market after buying the individual mortgages and bundling like valued investments into mortgage-backed securities so shares can be sold. It was banks who created collateralized debt obligations which were in high demand without considering the risks. It was not Freddie or Fanny that had anything to do with the banks offering loans with virtually no qualifications. But the real issue was the wide use of ARMs.. For the most part, even if the borrowers were not well qualified by traditional standards they would have been able to continue making the fixed payments. When interest rates rose many could no longer make the payments and had to give up their homes.

Everyone lost in this. Many were to blame. Fanny and Freddie are pretty far down the list of guilty parties. To blame the whole thing on these two organizations is absurd. Or I guess I should say, it's Larkin.

Forget it, Jake. It's Larkin.

Which capitalists did that? Those that created CDAs and lent money to
people that were never going to be able to afford repayments. When it went
pear-shaped they walked away and let you, me and our children pick up and
repay the debts.

The people that did that were accountants and MBAs and bankers, and I doubt
even a brain-dead libertarian would think they were socialists or
communists.

As the wags put it, "Osama bin Laden would have been more effective if he
had been a banker".


Another example, currently playing out...

My cousin works for a large aerospace company, and they are in the process
of being merged with another aerospace company to make synergistic
savings.

Raytheon and Collins? Collins/UTAS/Pratt is one of my best customers.
Raytheon is pretty good too.

I /think/ Collins is part of it, and I /think/ UTAS
is where my cousin is - but his company seems to change
name/ownership every couple of years and I'm too bored
to keep track.


Unfortunately there is no overlap between the two companies, so there is no
duplication to remove.

I just read an interview with the CEO of Raytheon, in Aviation Week. He
expects a billion a year in profit from synergies. The merger would have been
forbidden on antitrust grounds if there had been much market overlap.

That's not the rule. What matters is the amount of remaining competition. Mergers between companies with nearly total overlap are often approved.

I'm expecting good things here. Raytheon is a lot better at electronics than
UTAS. The synergy isn't in markets, it's in skills.

My cousin's company is nothing to do with electronics,
and that's possibly the basis of the lack of synergy.

As I understand it, and that's a weak statement, the
lack of synergy is in skills as well as anything else.

That also is likely not a real synergy. But often companies combine exactly because there is little overlap except for customers. Now they can bid on contracts where they offer a lot bigger piece of the pie. Networking companies are like that. They want to sell big iron that makes the Internet. But often customers also need small pieces like circuit to packet. If you have that part you might be able to bid the entire job while your competitors can't because they dropped their low rent products.

Nonetheless savings must be made, presumably to repay the highly leveraged
buyout.

If we're talking Ratyheon and Collins/UTC, it's a stock deal, a merger. No
debt is involved.

Pass.

Nonetheless, the result (I'm told) is that the US
will lose skilled profitable work and capability.

How is that. Are they going to ship people to Antarctica?


Rick C.

---- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
---- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[John Larkin]

On Tue, 18 Jun 2019 18:41:03 +0100, Tom Gardner
<spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 18/06/19 15:40, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 18 Jun 2019 13:19:31 +0100, Tom Gardner <spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk
wrote:

On 18/06/19 04:53, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 18 Jun 2019 01:51:43 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 18/06/19 01:33, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 18 Jun 2019 01:08:46 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 17/06/19 20:51, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 17 Jun 2019 14:54:28 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net
wrote:

On 6/17/19 12:50 PM, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 17/06/19 17:45, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 17 Jun 2019 17:21:25 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 17/06/19 16:29, John Larkin wrote:
The great mass murders of the last century, a couple
hundred million starved and murdered, were engineered
by socialists.

Except for those in that centuries, previous centuries,
and the current century that can only be described as
capitalists - and who embody and demonstrate traditional
libertarian ideals.

I was thinking of Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Kim,
Castro, Maduro. Who did you have in mind?

Those people were indeed grade one bastards.

Slavers are the obvious example.

But there are many less extreme ones. All you have to do is
look at the fascist and/or religious dictatorships.



JL isn't particularly hip to the influence time or culture in
his analysis of world history; in his universe Hitler and
Stalin and Mao became "socialist" one day and all evil sprung
out of that one decision, and not the fact that these were
people who had an enormously effective personality cult
surrounding them and that their attraction to the people, the
masses of millions of people who desperately wanted them to be
in power (at least for a while), was almost entirely divorced
from what they actually believed about organizing a society.

What were Hitler, Stalin, and Mao's actual convictions on what
principles should be used to organize a society? Well if you
read their writings what you'll notice is that for the most
part it seems like they didn't really have many. Or at least
nothing particularly consistent. It varied with time and
political necessity. The only really consistent thing about
them was that they were inconsistent in what they believed
about things

Their most dangerous conviction was that they were always right
about everything and should therefore control everything.

The same is true of rampant free-marketeers and libertarians.

But they have to compete. And we have elections.



The least dangerous thing that attitude causes is to wreck the
economy.

Unfortunately rampant capitalism (and their accountants and MBAs)
/did/ wreck the economy.

"Capitalism" was a slur invented by Marx. We don't live in a world
dominated by Capital. I don't think anyone ever has.

Even if correct, that wouldn't change the principal point.

Capitalists /did/ wreck the economy.

Is the economy wrecked? I hadn't noticed. Which Capitalists did that?

Didn't you notice the 2007 crash? Many people did, and many are still
suffering from the consequences.


That was mostly a real estate bubble with a lot of paper profits and paper
losses.

Yup. Traditional capitalist speculation at work.


It was driven by Fanny and Freddy here, quasi-government entities. They
encouraged banks to lend, so the banks did. Capitalist banks never would have
made the insane loans that they did if they couldn't hand off the rotten
packages to the government.

Yup. That is indeed what the capitalists did, and how
the capitalists screwed the economy and us and our
children.

Not communists. Not socialists. Capitalists.

The government offered them profit and assumed the risk. And coerced
them to make the loans.

Before Bill Clinton deregulated the home mortgage business, things
were pretty stable.

Some government regulation can mitigate imperfections in "capitalism",
namely some of the dumber behavior of people who don't know enough
economic theory to behave as predicted.

The virtue of "capitalism" is that greedy people have to compete.

Which capitalists did that? Those that created CDAs and lent money to
people that were never going to be able to afford repayments. When it went
pear-shaped they walked away and let you, me and our children pick up and
repay the debts.

The people that did that were accountants and MBAs and bankers, and I doubt
even a brain-dead libertarian would think they were socialists or
communists.

As the wags put it, "Osama bin Laden would have been more effective if he
had been a banker".


Another example, currently playing out...

My cousin works for a large aerospace company, and they are in the process
of being merged with another aerospace company to make synergistic
savings.

Raytheon and Collins? Collins/UTAS/Pratt is one of my best customers.
Raytheon is pretty good too.

I /think/ Collins is part of it, and I /think/ UTAS
is where my cousin is - but his company seems to change
name/ownership every couple of years and I'm too bored
to keep track.

I have to. They write purchase orders.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 18/06/19 19:15, Rick C wrote:

On Tuesday, June 18, 2019 at 1:41:08 PM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 18/06/19 15:40, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 18 Jun 2019 13:19:31 +0100, Tom Gardner <spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk
wrote:

On 18/06/19 04:53, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 18 Jun 2019 01:51:43 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:


Capitalists /did/ wreck the economy.

Is the economy wrecked? I hadn't noticed. Which Capitalists did that?

Didn't you notice the 2007 crash? Many people did, and many are still
suffering from the consequences.


That was mostly a real estate bubble with a lot of paper profits and paper
losses.

Yup. Traditional capitalist speculation at work.


It was driven by Fanny and Freddy here, quasi-government entities. They
encouraged banks to lend, so the banks did. Capitalist banks never would have
made the insane loans that they did if they couldn't hand off the rotten
packages to the government.

Yup. That is indeed what the capitalists did, and how
the capitalists screwed the economy and us and our
children.

Not communists. Not socialists. Capitalists.

As usual Larkin has no knowledge of the facts. Freddie and Fanny were middle men selling the securities on the market after buying the individual mortgages and bundling like valued investments into mortgage-backed securities so shares can be sold. It was banks who created collateralized debt obligations which were in high demand without considering the risks. It was not Freddie or Fanny that had anything to do with the banks offering loans with virtually no qualifications. But the real issue was the wide use of ARMs. For the most part, even if the borrowers were not well qualified by traditional standards they would have been able to continue making the fixed payments. When interest rates rose many could no longer make the payments and had to give up their homes.

Everyone lost in this. Many were to blame. Fanny and Freddie are pretty far down the list of guilty parties. To blame the whole thing on these two organizations is absurd. Or I guess I should say, it's Larkin.

Forget it, Jake. It's Larkin.


Which capitalists did that? Those that created CDAs and lent money to
people that were never going to be able to afford repayments. When it went
pear-shaped they walked away and let you, me and our children pick up and
repay the debts.

The people that did that were accountants and MBAs and bankers, and I doubt
even a brain-dead libertarian would think they were socialists or
communists.

As the wags put it, "Osama bin Laden would have been more effective if he
had been a banker".


Another example, currently playing out...

My cousin works for a large aerospace company, and they are in the process
of being merged with another aerospace company to make synergistic
savings.

Raytheon and Collins? Collins/UTAS/Pratt is one of my best customers.
Raytheon is pretty good too.

I /think/ Collins is part of it, and I /think/ UTAS
is where my cousin is - but his company seems to change
name/ownership every couple of years and I'm too bored
to keep track.


Unfortunately there is no overlap between the two companies, so there is no
duplication to remove.

I just read an interview with the CEO of Raytheon, in Aviation Week. He
expects a billion a year in profit from synergies. The merger would have been
forbidden on antitrust grounds if there had been much market overlap.

That's not the rule. What matters is the amount of remaining competition. Mergers between companies with nearly total overlap are often approved.


I'm expecting good things here. Raytheon is a lot better at electronics than
UTAS. The synergy isn't in markets, it's in skills.

My cousin's company is nothing to do with electronics,
and that's possibly the basis of the lack of synergy.

As I understand it, and that's a weak statement, the
lack of synergy is in skills as well as anything else.

That also is likely not a real synergy. But often companies combine exactly because there is little overlap except for customers. Now they can bid on contracts where they offer a lot bigger piece of the pie. Networking companies are like that. They want to sell big iron that makes the Internet. But often customers also need small pieces like circuit to packet. If you have that part you might be able to bid the entire job while your competitors can't because they dropped their low rent products.


Nonetheless savings must be made, presumably to repay the highly leveraged
buyout.

If we're talking Ratyheon and Collins/UTC, it's a stock deal, a merger. No
debt is involved.

Pass.

Nonetheless, the result (I'm told) is that the US
will lose skilled profitable work and capability.

How is that. Are they going to ship people to Antarctica?

My very limited understanding is that things will wither,
e.g. people retire/leave/redundant and not replaced, or
no investment.

Presumably the work will be taken up somewhere else, but
not in the US.

I have no idea of what proportion of the companies that
is, but as I heard the story it is a typical case of
accountants/MBAs making big decisions without having a
clue what happens at the coalface.

 

[Rick C]

On Tuesday, June 18, 2019 at 3:07:11 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:

On Tue, 18 Jun 2019 18:41:03 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 18/06/19 15:40, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 18 Jun 2019 13:19:31 +0100, Tom Gardner <spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk

Didn't you notice the 2007 crash? Many people did, and many are still
suffering from the consequences.


That was mostly a real estate bubble with a lot of paper profits and paper
losses.

Yup. Traditional capitalist speculation at work.


It was driven by Fanny and Freddy here, quasi-government entities. They
encouraged banks to lend, so the banks did. Capitalist banks never would have
made the insane loans that they did if they couldn't hand off the rotten
packages to the government.

Yup. That is indeed what the capitalists did, and how
the capitalists screwed the economy and us and our
children.

Not communists. Not socialists. Capitalists.

The government offered them profit and assumed the risk. And coerced
them to make the loans.

Lol... more convenient memory. "Coerced"! Lol

Did they also coerce investors into buying the collateralized debt obligations created by the banks? You literally are incapable of understanding any of this, right? This was all about greed on the parts of many. Trouble is not all the right people suffered when it fell apart.

Before Bill Clinton deregulated the home mortgage business, things
were pretty stable.

Interesting then that it was two years into Bush's term that it all fell apart. Too bad he wasn't bright enough to see disaster coming. That seems like a common thread with Bush.

Some government regulation can mitigate imperfections in "capitalism",
namely some of the dumber behavior of people who don't know enough
economic theory to behave as predicted.

The virtue of "capitalism" is that greedy people have to compete.

Like those who ran Enron or Bernie Madoff?

--

Rick C.

--++ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
--++ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Rick C]

On Tuesday, June 18, 2019 at 3:50:40 PM UTC-4, Michael Terrell wrote:

Moron buys an EV, then damns everyone who won't. I haven't owned a car in over 25 years. Only trucks. The last car was a high powered, retired Sherriff's cruiser. I've owned smaller cars, but I am tall, and they were painful to drive. Even some trucks are too small for me to drive. My favorite car was a restored 1966 red GTO that could wrap the speedometer back to the zero pin.

I bought it with a blown engine and rebuilt it. I installed a heavy duty three speed automatic transmission in it, and modified the drive train and chassis to make it fit, in place of the two speed Powerglide transmission. Gasoline was 8.9 cents a gallon for high test, on base, and it wouldn't hold three dollars worth of gasoline.


The latest is a large SUV, because I needed the low chassis, and extra legroom to be able to get in and out without help. You can stick your electric skateboards where the sun doesn't shine, along with all your lies.

The United States of America is exporting oil, bitch!

How does it feel that every vehicle you've ever owned is pig dog slow compared to a Tesla? My model X which has plenty of room and carries up to 6 passengers will still stomp on anything you've ever owned. It won't wrap the speedo needle though, doesn't have one.

--

Rick C.

--+- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
--+- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Michael Terrell]

On Monday, June 17, 2019 at 11:59:15 PM UTC-4, bitrex wrote:

On 6/17/19 5:25 AM, Michael Terrell wrote:
On Sunday, June 16, 2019 at 5:14:36 PM UTC-4, bitrex wrote:

Guy buys a book to not read it. Gosh if everyone bought books to not
read them it would be a great economic time to be a book-seller regardless.

Guy thinks he knows everything. You've never both something as a joke? You run joke candidates, and think you are so smart.

There was a new article on the radio a few days ago. It was about eliminating the fuel tax, and taxing you on the miles you drive. It's about time that the EVs and Biofuel tax cheats start paying their fair share of the cost for roads and bridges.


Many Americans seem determined to be the Middle East's and OPEC's bitch
their whole lives but I'm not into it myself.

Moron buys an EV, then damns everyone who won't. I haven't owned a car in over 25 years. Only trucks. The last car was a high powered, retired Sherriff's cruiser. I've owned smaller cars, but I am tall, and they were painful to drive. Even some trucks are too small for me to drive. My favorite car was a restored 1966 red GTO that could wrap the speedometer back to the zero pin.

I bought it with a blown engine and rebuilt it. I installed a heavy duty three speed automatic transmission in it, and modified the drive train and chassis to make it fit, in place of the two speed Powerglide transmission. Gasoline was 8.9 cents a gallon for high test, on base, and it wouldn't hold three dollars worth of gasoline.


The latest is a large SUV, because I needed the low chassis, and extra legroom to be able to get in and out without help. You can stick your electric skateboards where the sun doesn't shine, along with all your lies.

The United States of America is exporting oil, bitch!

 

[John Larkin]

On Tue, 18 Jun 2019 21:49:04 +0100, Tom Gardner
<spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 18/06/19 20:04, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 18 Jun 2019 18:41:03 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 18/06/19 15:40, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 18 Jun 2019 13:19:31 +0100, Tom Gardner <spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk
wrote:

On 18/06/19 04:53, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 18 Jun 2019 01:51:43 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 18/06/19 01:33, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 18 Jun 2019 01:08:46 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 17/06/19 20:51, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 17 Jun 2019 14:54:28 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net
wrote:

On 6/17/19 12:50 PM, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 17/06/19 17:45, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 17 Jun 2019 17:21:25 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 17/06/19 16:29, John Larkin wrote:
The great mass murders of the last century, a couple
hundred million starved and murdered, were engineered
by socialists.

Except for those in that centuries, previous centuries,
and the current century that can only be described as
capitalists - and who embody and demonstrate traditional
libertarian ideals.

I was thinking of Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Kim,
Castro, Maduro. Who did you have in mind?

Those people were indeed grade one bastards.

Slavers are the obvious example.

But there are many less extreme ones. All you have to do is
look at the fascist and/or religious dictatorships.



JL isn't particularly hip to the influence time or culture in
his analysis of world history; in his universe Hitler and
Stalin and Mao became "socialist" one day and all evil sprung
out of that one decision, and not the fact that these were
people who had an enormously effective personality cult
surrounding them and that their attraction to the people, the
masses of millions of people who desperately wanted them to be
in power (at least for a while), was almost entirely divorced
from what they actually believed about organizing a society.

What were Hitler, Stalin, and Mao's actual convictions on what
principles should be used to organize a society? Well if you
read their writings what you'll notice is that for the most
part it seems like they didn't really have many. Or at least
nothing particularly consistent. It varied with time and
political necessity. The only really consistent thing about
them was that they were inconsistent in what they believed
about things

Their most dangerous conviction was that they were always right
about everything and should therefore control everything.

The same is true of rampant free-marketeers and libertarians.

But they have to compete. And we have elections.



The least dangerous thing that attitude causes is to wreck the
economy.

Unfortunately rampant capitalism (and their accountants and MBAs)
/did/ wreck the economy.

"Capitalism" was a slur invented by Marx. We don't live in a world
dominated by Capital. I don't think anyone ever has.

Even if correct, that wouldn't change the principal point.

Capitalists /did/ wreck the economy.

Is the economy wrecked? I hadn't noticed. Which Capitalists did that?

Didn't you notice the 2007 crash? Many people did, and many are still
suffering from the consequences.


That was mostly a real estate bubble with a lot of paper profits and paper
losses.

Yup. Traditional capitalist speculation at work.


It was driven by Fanny and Freddy here, quasi-government entities. They
encouraged banks to lend, so the banks did. Capitalist banks never would have
made the insane loans that they did if they couldn't hand off the rotten
packages to the government.

Yup. That is indeed what the capitalists did, and how
the capitalists screwed the economy and us and our
children.

Not communists. Not socialists. Capitalists.

The government offered them profit and assumed the risk. And coerced
them to make the loans.

Before Bill Clinton deregulated the home mortgage business, things
were pretty stable.

I think the key problem was allowing banks etc to
loan more against their assets.

It used to be that small, mostly local "Savings and Loans" banks could
write mortgages, and general banks couldn't. Banks couldn't play in
the stock market either. After the deregulation, it became the Wild
West.

I got a Liar Loan from Wells Fargo. They didn't care because they
wanted to package it up and sell it.

As usual, even a decade after the fact of the crash, 100 economists
have 300 theories about what happened.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_policies_and_the_subprime_mortgage_crisis


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[Cursitor Doom]

On Mon, 17 Jun 2019 23:33:21 -0700, Rick C wrote:

I'll push for a Constitutional amendment to end birthright citizenship
if it is made retroactive to the time of the colonies first formation.
No one who was not born in this country of two parents who were already
citizens shall be given citizenship. This will require everyone in the
country who is of foreign decent to PROVE they are here legitimately.

Think again! If this had been in force, Obama could never have been
president and a key stage in the destruction of America would never have
taken place!



--
This message may be freely reproduced without limit or charge only via
the Usenet protocol. Reproduction in whole or part through other
protocols, whether for profit or not, is conditional upon a charge of
GBP10.00 per reproduction. Publication in this manner via non-Usenet
protocols constitutes acceptance of this condition.

 

[Cursitor Doom]

On Mon, 17 Jun 2019 22:47:02 +0000, Steve Wilson wrote:

> https://www.washingtonpost

Ah, there's your problem.


--
This message may be freely reproduced without limit or charge only via
the Usenet protocol. Reproduction in whole or part through other
protocols, whether for profit or not, is conditional upon a charge of
GBP10.00 per reproduction. Publication in this manner via non-Usenet
protocols constitutes acceptance of this condition.

 

[bitrex]

On 6/18/19 4:33 PM, Rick C wrote:

On Tuesday, June 18, 2019 at 3:50:40 PM UTC-4, Michael Terrell wrote:

Moron buys an EV, then damns everyone who won't. I haven't owned a car in over 25 years. Only trucks. The last car was a high powered, retired Sherriff's cruiser. I've owned smaller cars, but I am tall, and they were painful to drive. Even some trucks are too small for me to drive. My favorite car was a restored 1966 red GTO that could wrap the speedometer back to the zero pin.

I bought it with a blown engine and rebuilt it. I installed a heavy duty three speed automatic transmission in it, and modified the drive train and chassis to make it fit, in place of the two speed Powerglide transmission. Gasoline was 8.9 cents a gallon for high test, on base, and it wouldn't hold three dollars worth of gasoline.


The latest is a large SUV, because I needed the low chassis, and extra legroom to be able to get in and out without help. You can stick your electric skateboards where the sun doesn't shine, along with all your lies.

The United States of America is exporting oil, bitch!

How does it feel that every vehicle you've ever owned is pig dog slow compared to a Tesla? My model X which has plenty of room and carries up to 6 passengers will still stomp on anything you've ever owned. It won't wrap the speedo needle though, doesn't have one.

The generation in their 20s and 30s will write the history books to
reflect the Boomer generation in the proper light; a generation of
self-absorbed jerks who had the easy life handed to them on a platter,
and spent it tooling around on 9 cent a gallon gasoline blathering on
about how great they were while fucking everything up real good.

Very few seemed to improve with age...

 

[Michael Terrell]

On Tuesday, June 18, 2019 at 4:33:36 PM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:

On Tuesday, June 18, 2019 at 3:50:40 PM UTC-4, Michael Terrell wrote:

Moron buys an EV, then damns everyone who won't. I haven't owned a car in over 25 years. Only trucks. The last car was a high powered, retired Sherriff's cruiser. I've owned smaller cars, but I am tall, and they were painful to drive. Even some trucks are too small for me to drive. My favorite car was a restored 1966 red GTO that could wrap the speedometer back to the zero pin.

I bought it with a blown engine and rebuilt it. I installed a heavy duty three speed automatic transmission in it, and modified the drive train and chassis to make it fit, in place of the two speed Powerglide transmission.. Gasoline was 8.9 cents a gallon for high test, on base, and it wouldn't hold three dollars worth of gasoline.


The latest is a large SUV, because I needed the low chassis, and extra legroom to be able to get in and out without help. You can stick your electric skateboards where the sun doesn't shine, along with all your lies.

The United States of America is exporting oil, bitch!

How does it feel that every vehicle you've ever owned is pig dog slow compared to a Tesla? My model X which has plenty of room and carries up to 6 passengers will still stomp on anything you've ever owned. It won't wrap the speedo needle though, doesn't have one.

Name one production vehicle without one built in 1966 or before.


You tell me. Who do you have to try so hard to impress people with overpriced toys? I enjoyed rebuilding that GTO. The guy that blew the engine did it at a race track. If your artificial penis is so powerful, take it to a drag strip and race against real vehicles. I have no desire or need to impress any fool. I also owned a Chevy Stepvan for over a decade. Your toy would have fit inside, and you could have up to 135 gallons of gasoline, if all five tanks were installed. I'll bet that you couldn't do any repairs at all to that overpriced beer can. I can still maintain a lot on my pickup truck. I replaced a bad power steering pump a couple years ago. Other than tires and a brake job, I used it for over a decade with very few other problems. It still has the battery I installed no long after I got it, 12 years ago. Go try blowing your smoke up someone elkse's ass, you don't impress me with anything that you post.

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 18/06/19 21:45, Rick C wrote:

On Tuesday, June 18, 2019 at 4:41:47 PM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 18/06/19 19:15, Rick C wrote:
On Tuesday, June 18, 2019 at 1:41:08 PM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:

Nonetheless, the result (I'm told) is that the US
will lose skilled profitable work and capability.

How is that. Are they going to ship people to Antarctica?

My very limited understanding is that things will wither,
e.g. people retire/leave/redundant and not replaced, or
no investment.

Presumably the work will be taken up somewhere else, but
not in the US.

That sounds very, very general. Is it supposed to be about the merger that was being discussed? Is there anything to substantiate it?

It is based on informal conversations at a family
lunch with my cousin. I didn't quiz him about all the
gory details, but his statements had the ring of truth.

As I said, "My very limited understanding..."

I have no idea of what proportion of the companies that
is, but as I heard the story it is a typical case of
accountants/MBAs making big decisions without having a
clue what happens at the coalface.

Companies like that will not survive competition that works smarter, not harder.

Shame that the companies are "thrown away" by
accountants/MBAs after their bonuses or stock options,
when the engineering is fundamentally sound and
profitable.

 

[bitrex]

On 6/18/19 3:50 PM, Michael Terrell wrote:

On Monday, June 17, 2019 at 11:59:15 PM UTC-4, bitrex wrote:
On 6/17/19 5:25 AM, Michael Terrell wrote:
On Sunday, June 16, 2019 at 5:14:36 PM UTC-4, bitrex wrote:

Guy buys a book to not read it. Gosh if everyone bought books to not
read them it would be a great economic time to be a book-seller regardless.

Guy thinks he knows everything. You've never both something as a joke? You run joke candidates, and think you are so smart.

There was a new article on the radio a few days ago. It was about eliminating the fuel tax, and taxing you on the miles you drive. It's about time that the EVs and Biofuel tax cheats start paying their fair share of the cost for roads and bridges.


Many Americans seem determined to be the Middle East's and OPEC's bitch
their whole lives but I'm not into it myself.


Moron buys an EV, then damns everyone who won't. I haven't owned a car in over 25 years. Only trucks. The last car was a high powered, retired Sherriff's cruiser. I've owned smaller cars, but I am tall, and they were painful to drive. Even some trucks are too small for me to drive. My favorite car was a restored 1966 red GTO that could wrap the speedometer back to the zero pin.

I bought it with a blown engine and rebuilt it. I installed a heavy duty three speed automatic transmission in it, and modified the drive train and chassis to make it fit, in place of the two speed Powerglide transmission. Gasoline was 8.9 cents a gallon for high test, on base, and it wouldn't hold three dollars worth of gasoline.


The latest is a large SUV, because I needed the low chassis, and extra legroom to be able to get in and out without help. You can stick your electric skateboards where the sun doesn't shine, along with all your lies.

The United States of America is exporting oil, bitch!

Doesn't mean the transit sector is any less reliant on Saudi oil,
America's gasoline and jet fuel refinery infrastructure isn't set up to
process light shale oil.

It's set up to refine heavy crude and the Saudi's product is relatively
cheap and a perfect match.

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 18/06/19 20:04, John Larkin wrote:

On Tue, 18 Jun 2019 18:41:03 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 18/06/19 15:40, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 18 Jun 2019 13:19:31 +0100, Tom Gardner <spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk
wrote:

On 18/06/19 04:53, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 18 Jun 2019 01:51:43 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 18/06/19 01:33, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 18 Jun 2019 01:08:46 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 17/06/19 20:51, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 17 Jun 2019 14:54:28 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net
wrote:

On 6/17/19 12:50 PM, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 17/06/19 17:45, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 17 Jun 2019 17:21:25 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 17/06/19 16:29, John Larkin wrote:
The great mass murders of the last century, a couple
hundred million starved and murdered, were engineered
by socialists.

Except for those in that centuries, previous centuries,
and the current century that can only be described as
capitalists - and who embody and demonstrate traditional
libertarian ideals.

I was thinking of Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Kim,
Castro, Maduro. Who did you have in mind?

Those people were indeed grade one bastards.

Slavers are the obvious example.

But there are many less extreme ones. All you have to do is
look at the fascist and/or religious dictatorships.



JL isn't particularly hip to the influence time or culture in
his analysis of world history; in his universe Hitler and
Stalin and Mao became "socialist" one day and all evil sprung
out of that one decision, and not the fact that these were
people who had an enormously effective personality cult
surrounding them and that their attraction to the people, the
masses of millions of people who desperately wanted them to be
in power (at least for a while), was almost entirely divorced
from what they actually believed about organizing a society.

What were Hitler, Stalin, and Mao's actual convictions on what
principles should be used to organize a society? Well if you
read their writings what you'll notice is that for the most
part it seems like they didn't really have many. Or at least
nothing particularly consistent. It varied with time and
political necessity. The only really consistent thing about
them was that they were inconsistent in what they believed
about things

Their most dangerous conviction was that they were always right
about everything and should therefore control everything.

The same is true of rampant free-marketeers and libertarians.

But they have to compete. And we have elections.



The least dangerous thing that attitude causes is to wreck the
economy.

Unfortunately rampant capitalism (and their accountants and MBAs)
/did/ wreck the economy.

"Capitalism" was a slur invented by Marx. We don't live in a world
dominated by Capital. I don't think anyone ever has.

Even if correct, that wouldn't change the principal point.

Capitalists /did/ wreck the economy.

Is the economy wrecked? I hadn't noticed. Which Capitalists did that?

Didn't you notice the 2007 crash? Many people did, and many are still
suffering from the consequences.


That was mostly a real estate bubble with a lot of paper profits and paper
losses.

Yup. Traditional capitalist speculation at work.


It was driven by Fanny and Freddy here, quasi-government entities. They
encouraged banks to lend, so the banks did. Capitalist banks never would have
made the insane loans that they did if they couldn't hand off the rotten
packages to the government.

Yup. That is indeed what the capitalists did, and how
the capitalists screwed the economy and us and our
children.

Not communists. Not socialists. Capitalists.

The government offered them profit and assumed the risk. And coerced
them to make the loans.

Before Bill Clinton deregulated the home mortgage business, things
were pretty stable.

I think the key problem was allowing banks etc to
loan more against their assets.

When I first got a mortgage banks etc were allowed
to loan 7* their assets, a figure more unless
unchanged since the 30s. I was horrified to learn
that had been "relaxed", and that one of our
institutions had loaned 48* their assets before
it collapsed.

Some government regulation can mitigate imperfections in "capitalism",
namely some of the dumber behavior of people who don't know enough
economic theory to behave as predicted.

Yup. For centuries it has been known to be necessary
and beneficial; see "the hog cycle".

Markets aren't "perfect", even though some like to think
and claim they are.


> The virtue of "capitalism" is that greedy people have to compete.

And that's also one of its weakness, when taken to
ideological extremes.

Which capitalists did that? Those that created CDAs and lent money to
people that were never going to be able to afford repayments. When it went
pear-shaped they walked away and let you, me and our children pick up and
repay the debts.

The people that did that were accountants and MBAs and bankers, and I doubt
even a brain-dead libertarian would think they were socialists or
communists.

As the wags put it, "Osama bin Laden would have been more effective if he
had been a banker".


Another example, currently playing out...

My cousin works for a large aerospace company, and they are in the process
of being merged with another aerospace company to make synergistic
savings.

Raytheon and Collins? Collins/UTAS/Pratt is one of my best customers.
Raytheon is pretty good too.

I /think/ Collins is part of it, and I /think/ UTAS
is where my cousin is - but his company seems to change
name/ownership every couple of years and I'm too bored
to keep track.

I have to. They write purchase orders.

I may be (slightly) interested; you are committed

 

[Rick C]

On Tuesday, June 18, 2019 at 4:41:47 PM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:

On 18/06/19 19:15, Rick C wrote:
On Tuesday, June 18, 2019 at 1:41:08 PM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:

Nonetheless, the result (I'm told) is that the US
will lose skilled profitable work and capability.

How is that. Are they going to ship people to Antarctica?

My very limited understanding is that things will wither,
e.g. people retire/leave/redundant and not replaced, or
no investment.

Presumably the work will be taken up somewhere else, but
not in the US.

That sounds very, very general. Is it supposed to be about the merger that was being discussed? Is there anything to substantiate it?

I have no idea of what proportion of the companies that
is, but as I heard the story it is a typical case of
accountants/MBAs making big decisions without having a
clue what happens at the coalface.

Companies like that will not survive competition that works smarter, not harder.

--

Rick C.

-+-- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-+-- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 18/06/19 23:11, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Tue, 18 Jun 2019 12:04:57 -0700, John Larkin wrote:

The government offered them profit and assumed the risk. And coerced
them to make the loans.

Don't forget the ratings agencies' part in this. They certified those
liar loan packages as AAA. It's like you go to your kosher butcher for a
pound of sausages, they've been stamped by the Rabbi and all, but when
you get them home you find they're full of all sorts of disgusting shit:
dog and cat meat, gammelfleisch, dead rats, slugs, turtle rectums, hyena
entrails and elephant dung.
That may sound a bit exaggerated, but it's exactly what they did with
those minced up bundles of bum securities. Bastards.

Yup.

Capitalist bastards.
Not communist bastards.
Not socialist bastards.

Capitalist bastards.

 

[Cursitor Doom]

On Tue, 18 Jun 2019 08:53:15 -0700, Rick C wrote:

> So what is the first most unreliable part of the car?

The nut behind the wheel?



--
This message may be freely reproduced without limit or charge only via
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protocols, whether for profit or not, is conditional upon a charge of
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protocols constitutes acceptance of this condition.

 

[Cursitor Doom]

On Tue, 18 Jun 2019 12:04:57 -0700, John Larkin wrote:

The government offered them profit and assumed the risk. And coerced
them to make the loans.

Don't forget the ratings agencies' part in this. They certified those
liar loan packages as AAA. It's like you go to your kosher butcher for a
pound of sausages, they've been stamped by the Rabbi and all, but when
you get them home you find they're full of all sorts of disgusting shit:
dog and cat meat, gammelfleisch, dead rats, slugs, turtle rectums, hyena
entrails and elephant dung.
That may sound a bit exaggerated, but it's exactly what they did with
those minced up bundles of bum securities. Bastards.



--
This message may be freely reproduced without limit or charge only via
the Usenet protocol. Reproduction in whole or part through other
protocols, whether for profit or not, is conditional upon a charge of
GBP10.00 per reproduction. Publication in this manner via non-Usenet
protocols constitutes acceptance of this condition.

 

[Rick C]

On Tuesday, June 18, 2019 at 5:39:00 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:

I got a Liar Loan from Wells Fargo. They didn't care because they
wanted to package it up and sell it.

With that logic you should follow it through to the ones who bought the CDOs creating a huge market for even more loans. But that wouldn't be a Larkin kind of mistake. It wouldn't be blaming others. It would be placing the blame where it belongs.

The big banks were working both sides of the equation and promoting CDOs to customers even after they saw the hand writing on the wall and stopped buying themselves. After all, the banks had to offload them on someone!

Sounds like you were right there with your hand out as well.

--

Rick C.

-++- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-++- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Rick C]

On Tuesday, June 18, 2019 at 5:35:00 PM UTC-4, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Mon, 17 Jun 2019 23:33:21 -0700, Rick C wrote:

I'll push for a Constitutional amendment to end birthright citizenship
if it is made retroactive to the time of the colonies first formation.
No one who was not born in this country of two parents who were already
citizens shall be given citizenship. This will require everyone in the
country who is of foreign decent to PROVE they are here legitimately.


Think again! If this had been in force, Obama could never have been
president and a key stage in the destruction of America would never have
taken place!



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protocols, whether for profit or not, is conditional upon a charge of
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protocols constitutes acceptance of this condition.

Anyone other than native Americans would be citizens.

--

Rick C.

-+-+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-+-+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209