Essen pee 500
 

How's your portfolio?

Heh I have 20% in an S&P index, 5% in an S&P enhanced index. :) I never looked until you posted that silly chart.

Things are looking good for us to retire once the kid hits college, provided my wife doesn't become a director or some silly thing.

S&P 500 at an all time high.
Dow Jones Industrials near an all time high
Good jobs report (110,000 new jobs created).
Interest rates low.
Now, where are the libs to tell us how bad the economy is.

Wait for it.....

What portfolio?:confused: I cashed mine out to start a new business, now I get to start again. When I make money, which may be awhile...quite awhile.

From about 9/11 to about 2003 it looked like my retirement was passing out of sight over the horizon. Now it looks like I am STILL going to be able to retire at a reasonable age and amount of time. The dip (if that's all it was) put me back about a year is all.

But it did force me to diversify into international markets and small caps, which I hadn't done previously. I'm still about 30% into S&P mutual (down from 60%).

All of my 401K is in mutual funds and except about 10% fed bonds (guaranteed). My other investments are significantly riskier but right now make me look like a freaking genius.

Think this is a burp-bubble or are we back on a growth track?

Bot

Thanks Bot for posting this, my Van Guard is doing well along with the Latin American fund,which someone has be nudging me to change to the Pacific rim.

Damn, that looks like bubble material. Didn't the indexes look pretty good at various points in '29? Wasn't that in the days when the free market had better sway than now?

Nothing wrong with some diversification, Mistress. I think the Pacific Rim is more likely to experience solid, long-term growth than South America is. SA has always seemed too volatile and risky to me. The Asian mindset is more long term and determined in my opinion.

I have no idea. Perhaps you can bring education to the masses on that subject. Ever heard of those geniuses Smoot and Hawley? That's your free trade in action. And there's a good place to start in educating us about the great depression and how things are similar.

Sometimes the market goes up. Sometimes the market goes down.

Make money by investing (AKA "betting") on one direction or the other.

Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets.

B

up n down, up n down, in n out.....

the stuff I read in the local paper and wall street journal would have one expect a possible dip in the near future.

my stuff in indexed on the S&P also.

fingers crossed.:)

I'm not real familiar with the Great Depression and whies and wherefors it's true. It is interesting that the Pres. who managed to shepherd us out of it and who dramatically improved the treatment of returned combat vets has been maligned for years by people devoted, in near religious manner, to the free market.

Ohhh,you mean "Rosenfeld" as the far right Capitalists{I,E,Thiefs}called him.

Speaking of faith-based opinions.

It's a crap shoot I tell ya.

Oh well, life is short, can't be astute on every detail of everything. Nonetheless, one can grasp many bits and pieces just by accident.

I believe math is the only pure science, correct me if I'm wrong, and that's because it exists only in the mind, in strictly theoretical form.

This business of clinging to 'free market' with an aggressive vengeance reminds me (I said this somewhere else recently, oh well) of some fanatical Stalinist who turns in his next door neighbor for selling a few onions for the equivalent of 50 cents.

"Ve Vill NOT have capitalism destroying the sanctity of the People's Socialist Republic!"

All the anxiety about socialized medicine overlooks, in my view, the probable fact that we are going to have de facto socialized medicine from hell for the foreseeable future, in the form of indigent people cramming emergency rooms, to get care that could have been had for pennies on the dollar with some sort of triage based community clinics.

It's hard to imagine people sitting still for po' folk dying miserable deaths in the street while others get expensive cosmetic surgery and multiple transplants in order to extract a few more years of life from an abused body. This is not India.

Free market is the way to go in about 90 to 95% of endeavors in our land but trying to cram every damn thing into some theory is just whack.

We now have a free market medical system with one of its prime aims being to avoid sick people. S'plain the wisdom of that one to me.

The nerve of that guy, faking like he could walk and betraying his class all the while. :mad:

Interesting presentation. Perhaps you can connect it to the S&P?

B

I doubt it.

Oh spare me. SOP for you. You participated in moving the conversation in that direction, now you're playing this BS card. I wonder why I bother.

Get over yourself.

Oh here it is:

Dude asks for education and when it proves to be unpalatable for his country club tastes, he resorts to well practiced snobbery.

Right champion there, bucko!!

What more is there to be said about the S & P? It's looking a lot like the stock chart of Yahoo just before the '00 bust.

Now if either of you geniuii (actually not a word -- geniuses is more like it) think you can rebut any of my brilliance, which has clearly shot serious holes into your cherished free market religion, have at it boys.

BTW, dude, I'm sure glad someone is taking up the banner of discrediting Che. Guy is making all sorts of inroads into the intellectual life of the nation's young uns.

Rebut what you said. Hm. What was there to rebut?

The only assertion that was falsifiable was the first, about math being a science. It is not. Science is empirically tested for evidence of veracity. Mathematics is not.

B

Speaking of Che...

Jay Ambrose: Che Guevara was a murderous thug
Jay Ambrose, The Examiner
2007-10-10 07:00:00.0
Current rank: # 3 of 5,680

WASHINGTON - Ernesto “Che” Guevara was executed 40 years ago this week, and the impulse to honor him is bursting out all over.
Celebrations are taking place in such places as Cuba, Bolivia and Ireland, a priest has called him a saint, and hosts of other people are likewise instructing us on what a hero he was, what a moral giant, what a fierce combatant for justice in an imperialist-threatened, inhumane world.
Not to interrupt the hallucinatory hosannas or anything, but it seems worth mentioning that there is another side to this story, the one that says Che was in fact a murderous, evil, obsessed thug who stands convicted of his vicious ideological fanaticism and cruelties by his own words as well as by his damnable deeds.
Perhaps the idolizers who wear the Che T-shirts are unaware of those words, as when he said that a true revolutionary had to hate so much that he would be pushed past ordinary human limits and become “an effective, violent, selective and cold killing machine.”
Perhaps they don't know that, after the Soviets took their nuclear missiles out of Cuba in 1962, he told a reporter he had hoped to “use them against the very heart of America, including New York City,” very likely killing some of those who would later put on those T-shirts, and otherwise making this particular fad less likely.
Perhaps the people who make Che-adoring movies — Robert Redford did it — or write adulatory pieces about Fidel Castro's henchman are ignorant of how Che recklessly exterminated people who had been proven guilty of absolutely nothing, sometimes shooting them in the back of the neck himself.
Following the Castro takeover of Cuba in 1959, Che ran a Havana prison in which he killed, killed and then killed some more, and later helped start the labor camp system in which homosexuals and others considered undesirable were to be confined as nothing more than slaves.
None of this information is hard to come by. There are a number of easily accessible, well-researched, carefully documented, evidence-heavy articles reciting the truth, while telling us as well how Che’s economic guidance of Cuba's central bank was a disaster that further afflicted people who either learned to survive hunger-inducing totalitarianism or risk their lives fleeing the island.
Turn to these articles instead of to romantic fantasies, and you'll also learn how this Argentinean doctor left Cuba after an apparent falling out with Castro, fought in the Congo and then went to Bolivia to liberate peasants who were finding their lives improved without his aid and were intelligently wary of this crazed ideologue. That’s where he was caught and shot to death at the age of 39.
One writer speculates that a famous, endlessly reproduced photograph of a handsome, bold-looking Che is at least partly responsible for some coming to very nearly worship him as an unparalleled 20th-century fighter for societal righteousness.
Maybe so. Images can be powerful that way. But as the writer recognizes, it is hardly excusable for this or any other reason that anyone who has delved into the story of this cruel, Hitler-like, 20th century scourge to preach he was a good man with the right ideas.
What's at work in the idolizing is either a mild leftist ideology that decides to leave out or refuses to believe the condemnatory stuff, or a wild leftist ideology that says yes, what Che did was justified in trying to set the world right.
Either way, there are many perils, such as the destructive march of some Latin American countries — such as Hugo Chavez-led Venezuela — toward a destructive, liberty-denying socialist future.
Examiner Columnist Jay Ambrose is a former Washington opinion writer and editor of two dailies. He may be reached at SpeaktoJay@aol.com

Examiner

Well, sure. But he LOOKED cool . . .

What science is it that studies the splitting of hairs?

OK, knower of all things, what category would you place math in? As far as rebutting, it amazes me that characters in this country, enjoying the greatest average level of individual wealth in history, riding on the coat-tails of a highly successful combination of private and public initiative, whine endlessly about the sort of public spending that enabled their fathers and grandfathers to get an education the sort of which their ancestors only dreamed about, more often than not.

You see your own pet theories. All else is grist for your mill, and worthy of scorn.

Oh damn, and here I was going to sing his praise.

Give me a break, the guy had a catchy looking face on a T shirt, and all sorts of people wanted to cop the "rebel w/o a clue" mantle by wearing it. Poor fool was hung out to dry by his buddy Fidel, he thought he could just show up in Bolivia and lead the masses to a better life.

This guy actually worries anyone? I'm more worried about the enormous funds that have been (it ain't over) wasted in our various campaigns to stamp out this evil doctrine, this foul infection that once it takes root, renders it's victims little better than the living dead, zombies who wish only to infect others with their poison.

Good lord, watching some of the grave faced dudes of the 40s and 50s carry on about Godless, evil socialism is jaw dropping stuff. And these cats actually believed it.

What is it in so many humans, that drives them to identify the chief evil in the world as being that crowd over there? 'All of us-uns are God's chosen and we will cleanse the world of this vermin!' :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

(Please note, this is not an actual quote -- merely a light speculaion on the inner workings of various fanatical minds)

;)

Looks good on a tee shirt, too.

I like the one of him where it says "brought to you by capitalism" at the bottom.

Then there's the one of him with the bullet hole in his head; that's cute too, I suppose.

Except for a few pinheads in Berkeley, most of the youth will grow up and relize the Che was a murder and POS. He was Castros enforcer. If you and the other pinheads in Berkeley feel that thats something to celebrate, have at it.

Muy perdonnes, did I say anything nice about him? I have it on good authority that he was a murderer. So was our man Somoza in Nicaragua. It'd be quite a contest tween them, though I think Somoza would whoop him.

BTW, let's talk about the S & P. Every now and then, we hear about it here in Berkeley. What are your favorite companies in it? Are they coming up with some nifty innovations? Have you ever considered writing one of them with some heartfelt and expert advice?

Or is it one big horse race, only with much higher stakes?

Next time instead of saying "you and your crowd," I'll use 'ilk.' Much more refined.

C'mon dude, we know you have a "Che" T-Shirt......
Everyone in Berkeley has one, don't they??? :D

Well some people thought Hitler was a good guy.:rolleyes:

And Stalin made them both look like amateurs, yet every liberals dream date FDR sucked up to him pretty good. Oh well.

I don't know. Sometimes I get all stony faced and all when I read about the fun loving stuff that Maoists, Communists and their ilk (refined isn't it) get up to. During the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s (80s and 90s too) they sure did kill a lot of people. Orders of magnitude (in the language of mathematics that means multiply by 10 or 100 or 1000 or other multiple of ten) greater than any aberrant US soldier or failed policy . I guess those grave faced dudes in the 50s actually believed that communists worldwide were killing folks right and left - most likely because they were doing exactly that. I mean really, you want the true ethos of the fabricated phrase "we had to destroy the village in order to save it" look no further than Mao or Stalin or Ortega or Castro or Guaverra or Pot. They actually did destroy numerous villages and killed millions in doing so; all so they could bring a better life to their homelands (or someone else's). Fitting that the quote was fabricated by a really progressive dude.

Looking back on things though it seems that the folks living in the communist countries are most responsible for ridding themselves of "the vermin" as you put it. I'm sure we helped along the way but there's nothing we could do that people who actually lived under communism couldn't do better.

What has developed into one of the most bizarre of ironic truisms is the fad in this country and Europe of rich privileged morons who feel such great love for this communist system of government. No matter how many times it's failed worldwide and taken millions to their deaths with it there's no shortage of people here who will defend it at all costs. Many who are just purely ignorant of what they are advertising. Case in point; (pretty package, not a lot going on upstairs)

That's not nearly as depressing as the people who defend it or make light of it and know full well what it's done.

But hey, no big deal, right?:cool:

I saw some fool wearing one yesterday and knocked him on his butt. (spits terbaccy juice) :grim:

Dude, take a chill pill. What was FDR supposed to do? Tell him "no, we don't want to participate with no damn commies, we'd rather lose a million or two more troops in stopping Hitler all by ourselves."?

My point was, the commie thing in Latin America is not as simple as commie haters would have it. Somoza was way worse than Batista in Cuba, best I can tell, the commies in Nicaragua were taking the best route their naive little brains could come up with to get rid of him and make a fresh start.

So all this angst over Che while yawning at Somoza and hating the Sandinistas is just not too well founded, IMHO.

I have an idea that major upheaval would have occurred in those countries w/o communism. The czars and the Swedes shed copious amounts of blood in various struggles for territory, power, etc., long before Marx took his first typing class.

And I'm just sure Cameron Diaz can read Chinese. Many people have gotten tatoos with Chinese characters that said something other than what they thought it did.

Capitalism in this country has been far more equitable and fair than in other countries -- some places that went commie were dealing with the type of feudal lords our founders fled from and then threw off.

Uno mass, the GI bill is/was a socialist program. Ditto for the educational system that did a great deal to make this country a powerhouse.

And what is a hypothesis?

Webster disagrees with you:

Science: c; a branch of knowledge or study, especially one concerned with establishing and systematizing facts, principles, and methods as by experiments and hypothesis. ex: the science of mathematics.

As for rebutting or not, whether or not there is any prudence in establishing some sort of socialized medicine (shudder) is a matter far from settled. My thought is to have a sort of sliding scale, where well to do people would be free to access higher quality, more expensive care if they wish, with neighborhood clinics established to provide preventative care for lower income people, something that has been demonstrated to save much monies over the long haul.

I forget exactly, but we spend more per captia on health care in the US than anywhere else but are something like 15th or worse in quality of outcomes.

Webster agrees with me concerning the definition of science and disagrees with me concerning the definition of mathematics. Mathematics is the body of knowledge justified by deductive reasoning about abstract structures, starting from axioms and definitions. Science is tested by experimentation, it's hypotheses are inductively proven.

Have you ever heard of a mathematical proof derived by physical experimentation?

Mathematics is useful for science but is not necessary for a scientific proof. Physical experimentation is not necessary for mathematics, it would just be a dramatic ornamentation.

I have always heard that mathematics is the language of science.

Seems a nicely utilitarian definition.

That's roughly what I've heard. It's indespensible for physics and astronomy, for starters. And thought experiments have validity, particularly in math.

Nonetheless, I don't see much point in the distinction. My original point was that any attempt to cram the workings of the real world, involving numerous, infinite opportunities for human error or eccentricity, into a theory of how economics should work best is not likely to be successful.

And while I'm holding up Webster and crew, one of the definitions of 'rebut' is to expose the falcity of. It doesn't appear to be limited to that:

rebut: to contradict, refute, or oppose, espcially in a formal manner, by arguement, proof, etc., as in a debate.

Oh boy, more fun with dictionaries:

inductive; 2 : of, relating to, or employing mathematical or logical induction <inductive reasoning>

If math is to science and language is to literature then would you say language is the same as literature? Of course not! In a similar fashion, mathematics is used to communicate some scientific results. Math is not a scientific result.

There isn't a way that I can think of to rebut a thought that isn't first posed as a falsifiable hypothesis.

Vast arenas of possiblity can be approached with ideas that really can't be falsified, not with language only. Asserting with an argument that one such idea is loony could be called 'rebutting' as used in practice or per the definition.

Math is much more than a collection of random words, not yet arranged. It boggles the mind to think of the skill and imagination required to come up with calculus as Newton did, perhaps at the same time as Liebnitz, though there is endless controversy about that.

Not to belabor the point, but formal debate is initiated on a falsifiable premise: "Resolved that ...". So though we ordinarily think of hypothesis testing as being somehow mathematical, it isn't necessarily so.

And the same with scientific hypotheses. Evolution, for example, is still mostly within the domain of spoken language rather than mathematics. Which brings us full-circle. The major problem with evolutionary theory is that the theory is difficult to present as a falsifiable hypothesis. It isn't even inductively arguable except in very narrow circumstances. Instead, it is correlative (as is most of economics ...) and is abductively argued. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abductive_reasoning

Bot

On the second part, if that's how you want to limit the word, that's up to you. I've heard 'rebut' used more flexibly.

Who said that the saying "math is the language of science" is etched in stone? Do biology and botany use math to any degree? Not sure why you want to diss mathematics and mathematicians here.

Economics -- is that a science? Modern economics would be far poorer w/o linear algebra, which makes possible complex models with dozens of variables, each one affecting the manner in which the others will act upon the whole. I can only imagine the discoverer of that had to experiment plenty on paper to make sure it worked accurately.

Physics and math are intertwined in a big way. Math is more than the language of physics, it's an integral part of it. I guess you could say math is a tool of these two, as well as astronomy, but even that seems simplistic to me.

How much math have you gotten into? Have you ever seen the method by which calculus is proven, which essentially lays out the steps of its discovery? It's a thing of beauty, I'm telling you.

Complicated mathematical proofs require all sorts of mental experimentation. I've about tied my brain in knots trying to apply reglar ol' Euclidean geometry to 3 dimensional problems. Doesn't sound like it would be that tough but it is.

Then I read somewhere about the complexity of that. Didn't feel so bad afterwards.

I dunno, call it a discipline if you wish but it's far more than just a ***** of other sciences.

Whatever happened to that Cassandra guy who was talking about the apparent market health of 2007 just being another bubble? Jeez, what a loser . . . .