January 2012
1 post
“I’m dead serious,” the president continued, saying that any...”
– Obama Openly Asks Nation Why On Earth He Would Want To Serve For Another Term | The Onion - America’s Finest News Source
December 2011
3 posts
“Gingrich sees the world as a battleground — more than any other man alive,...”
– Imagining a Gingrich Presidency - Mickey Edwards - Politics - The Atlantic
What Obligation (if any) Is Owed?
The recent acquisition of Gowalla by Facebook is just the latest incidence of the potential tension between investors and founders when a company is acquired primarily for the team rather than for the technology, product or business that they’ve built. People around the web will take the opportunity to observe that in situations where a company is acquired in this way, the founders typically get...
“National home prices have declined 33% from the peak in 1Q06 through 3Q11,...”
– MICHELLE MEYER: Home Prices Will Continue To Plunge, And 2013 Will Be The Worst Year For Foreclosures In History
Normally I’m not one to say I told you so but … I totally did.
November 2011
1 post
“And last week, Romney released a commercial with footage in which Obama stated,...”
– Presidential Politics as Craven Crudités - NYTimes.com
September 2011
1 post
“As we’ve all learned, Bachmann’s strong points are her passion and...”
– The Bachmann Chronicles - NYTimes.com
July 2011
1 post
June 2011
2 posts
'Death Tax' Deception →
sawickipedia:
But the estate tax was meant to do more than bolster budgets and aid charities. From its inception, it was meant to ward off the emergence of a hereditary aristocracy in the United States. Established in 1916, the tax was a populist response to the excesses of the Gilded Age. President Theodore Roosevelt justified it by arguing that society has a claim upon the fortunes of its...
“The desire to own your own home, long a bedrock of the American Dream, is fast...”
– Index expected to show new low in interest in homeownership - ContraCostaTimes.com
I commented about four years ago that you will know the real estate crash is over when EVERYONE agrees that owning a house is just dumb, that the market will never recover, and that home ownership is dead. This was...
May 2011
1 post
“Have you noticed that the real-estate crash is almost always written about as a...”
– Tell your housing success story | Bankrate.com
April 2011
3 posts
“Nationally, prices have declined 32.6 percent since the market peaks, and are...”
– Home prices drop 3 percent in region - NorthJersey.com
Note too that there’s an arithmetic subtlety here - “fall from peak” numbers always look small by their nature. If prices go from 100 to 200 then they rose by 100%. If they fall from 200 to 100 then they fell by 50%. Same...
Best tax day for rich since '30s →
17%
That was the effective tax rate paid by the 400 Americans with the highest adjusted gross income in 2007, the most recent year with IRS data available. The figure is down from almost 30 percent in 2005. All in all, this April 15 could be the best tax day for the wealthy since the early 1930s - with top rates on ordinary income, capital gains, dividends, estates and gifts at or near historic...
March 2011
1 post
The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent terrorist threats and have therefore raised their security level from “Miffed” to “Peeved.” Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to “Irritated” or even “A Bit Cross.” The English have not been “A Bit Cross” since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies nearly ran out....
February 2011
4 posts
1 tag
WatchMy video response to “Why are there so few good sports-related start-ups?”
1 tag
WatchMy video response to “What exactly does it mean to be a “venture capitalist?”“
“So there you have it. Illegal immigrants: 393,000. Lying moms: one. Bankers:...”
– Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail? | Rolling Stone Politics
“The share of Americans who own their home dropped again last year, but that...”
– More people choosing to rent, not buy, their home Amy Hoak’s Home Economics - MarketWatch
When you read this story for the hundredth time, when it seems like the entire country is walking away from the concept of home ownership, when it feels like you’d really just be crazy to fly in...
January 2011
2 posts
“The bleakest year in the foreclosure crisis has only just begun. Lenders are...”
– Over 1 million Americans seen losing homes in 2011 - Yahoo! Finance
“Home prices fell for the 53rd consecutive month in November, taking the decline...”
– Home price drops exceed Great Depression: Zillow | Reuters
December 2010
2 posts
Survivor Entrepreneurs
If you live in or around the startup world (and if you read this blog I suspect that you do), you have almost certainly been exposed to what I’ll call the “all-in ethos” that is considered appropriate and even mandatory to be successful as an entrepreneur. What I mean by this ethos is the stories told and retold about a given founder’s willingness to max out credit cards, call in every favor, and...
“Glenn Beck today claimed that 10% of all Muslims are terrorists.”
– Glenn Beck claims that 10% of all Muslims are terrorists (Video) - National Political Buzz | Examiner.com
A lot of Americans take this man seriously, and worse - they feel they are righteous in doing so.
September 2010
1 post
“Reagan’s behavior might not pass muster with those voters today who insist...”
– What people forget about Reagan
August 2010
3 posts
“The average consumer WANTS to be misinformed about housing. He wants to buy, and...”
– patrick.net » Interview with Patrick
“The antigovernment campaign has always been phrased in terms of opposition to...”
– Paul Krugman - America Goes Dark - NYTimes.com
June 2010
3 posts
“The federal homebuyer tax credit shifted demand in the U.S. housing market...”
– Fannie Mae’s Duncan Says Homebuyer Tax Credit Shifted Demand - BusinessWeek
AWESOME. So taxpayers paid tens of billions of dollars to people who would have bought houses in 2010 anyway but bought them a few months earlier. So glad to hear my money was well-spent.
“Remember where you were, when you could still laugh about teabaggers and racists...”
– Wonkette : Arizona School Demands Black & Latino Students’ Faces On Mural Be Changed To White
It’s past time we acknowledge just how serious the racism problem in the country still is.
May 2010
1 post
“Everybody thinks rising home prices are good, but rising property prices may...”
– Housing Prices Are Falling Again. We Have a Moral Obligation to Embrace The Trend. « NewObservations.Net
April 2010
5 posts
“You probably think of a search as something you do when you enter a term into a...”
– How Did Twitter Pass Yahoo in Search? With Robots, of Course! | Peter Kafka | MediaMemo | AllThingsD
Yeah that’s kind of crap.
“How and when can you ask all of these delicate questions – You can’t blurt out...”
– Does the Size of a VC Fund Matter?
Rafer sez: @msuster this is the first time i’ve seen you borg’d by your new profession. These questions are perfectly fair game for a first meeting. The startup founder has every right to qualify the account he is selling to.
Founders: If the VC in question is...
“I see this mindset in New Yorkers who genuinely believe that $1 million is not a...”
– The National Housing Survey and the Real Estate Bear Market — Seeking Alpha
This piece is worth reading in its entirety.
“The $14 billion program, announced Friday, will try to stem a rising tide of...”
– Spring Outlook: Housing Sales Are Looking as Bleak as Ever - Yahoo! Real Estate
Let’s be honest about what this actually means: Lenders (banks) made really bad, really large loans to people who cannot afford to pay them back. It was always obvious to anyone with a brain that these borrowers...
March 2010
1 post
“Consider the following. The U.S. has about 131 million housing units (homes,...”
– Mean Street: Don’t Be Brainwashed by the Housing Cult - Deal Journal - WSJ
February 2010
6 posts
“We need to end the massive, distorting subsidies for home-ownership, health...”
– Fareed, on defusing our looming debt crisis (via newsweek) (via mikehudack)
On the subject of the mortgage tax deduction, I cannot agree more. As Fareed notes, the argument in favor of the tax deduction is that it encourages home ownership. This claim is absolutely mindless an ignores even the most...
“Tod, great post, but you didn’t detail the problem at a level that’s actionable....”
– Don’t “Pull A Patzer” And Other Lessons Learned On Our Trip Down Sand Hill Road
[This comment didn’t show up in oren’s browser, so crossposting.]
(via rafer)
Again, it’s critical for founders to understand all details of the documents their lawyers are preparing and that they are signing. The...
“The Tea Party appeals to the swelling numbers of the new former middle class...”
– Rehearsals for a Civil War - Clusterfuck Nation
JH Kunstler.
“…more than 11.3 million, or 24 percent, of all residential properties with...”
– CoreLogic: 24% of residential properties upside down | Analysis & Opinion | Reuters
1 tag
“The mayor of 12 places (including the Roger Smith) and the proud possessor of 34...”
– Beyond Twitter: An App That Lets You Truly See City
Love this half paragraph.
(via mattlehrer)
Of course, the guy’s job is “social media consultant”…
January 2010
9 posts
“Perhaps as interesting as P&G’s love of Facebook, was its skepticism...”
– David Hornik - VentureBlog
“Given that the tax credit appears to account for a good deal of the improvement...”
– Home Sales Worse Than Expected in December - NYTimes.com
So basically what you’re saying is - there actually is no housing recovery, that the government just gave the patient a shot of adrenaline via a tax giveaway, and that goosed the market for a few months? Yeah, that’s what I...
“That seat, held for nearly half a century by Mr. Kennedy, the liberal lion of...”
– G.O.P. Senate Victory Stuns Democrats - NYTimes.com
Ladies and gentlemen, your American voter. Votes for a Tea Party Republican to curtail Wall Street giveaways and “get jobs going” (whatever the hell that means). As de Tocqueville said, a democracy requires an educated electorate. And...
“The name Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission is poorly chosen; there’s an...”
– The Automatic Earth: January 13 2010: Punch and Judy, Pontius Pilate and the US dollar
“Broadly publicized and televised commission hearings like the one taking place...”
– The Automatic Earth: January 13 2010: Punch and Judy, Pontius Pilate and the US dollar
“Tax credits designed to revive the U.S. housing industry are costing taxpayers...”
– Bloomberg.com: News
The housebuyer giveaway was one of the most useless programs of all time. It accomplished almost nothing besides making a few brain-dead congresspeople feel good about themselves.
“Quickly, the specs. The Nexus One—built for Google by HTC—has a 1GHz Snapdragon...”
– Nexus One Review - Nexus one - Gizmodo
This sounds a lot like what I’d expect from a very good phone designed by HTC and without Apple’s design sensibility in the mix.
“In practice, therefore, our vacation policy seems to be “We’re all...”
– Should We Eliminate Our Vacation Policy?