Where is the US economy headed?

I traveled all over the place at public expense before I was 21 and everywhere I went was a dump.

Traveling in a car might involve risk but it does not involve abdicating all control. You're being obtuse. Flying is absurd. And it's bloody annoying to non-fliers, who are the majority, and poisonous.

Asthma in kids is more prevalent on busy airport flight-paths.

You wrote,

You have no appreciation for the world. Why do you bother staying alive?

You also wrote,

That must mean you also never take public transportation, because you would have to abdicate all control. You're quite and ignorant Brit.

More private vehicles adds to the pollution. Why do you even worry about kid's asthma? You shouldn't be driving your vehicle.

By heck ci., it sure is easy getting some of you guys snorting and popping off idiotic insults. What you know about my use of transport is nothing. To the extent I have used it to satisfy my whims I am ashamed of having done so. I don't go telling everybody about it. And at least most of my whims had a basis in some activity that most people consider understandable. Working say. Going to the pub.

Seeing the world is a ridiculous idea. Seeing yourself seeing the world is more like it. It being the sort of activity only those with your investment acumen (forgetting about the sell gold at £350 recommendation) can afford.

I once thought it would be a good idea to staple my bank balance to my shirt front to get the same effect without going to all the trouble you must do. When Veblen called modern leisure the "night shift" he had you in mind. Packing a suitcase is not something I'm ever going to do. And that's an easy stage in the operation to shift your eyeballs into somebody else's front yard to have a good nosey.

For a few years now I have had no car. I took a bus to and from the hospital for my cataract op and follow ups. There is more than enough within a mile of me to keep me interested. Watching big jetplanes going over with my X-ray imagination is quite amusing. Bottoms in serried ranks. Some twitching.

And the idea that I should do what you do in order to have a life is ******* ridiculous. I'm exceedingly pleased it is spent in England.

I've been wearing the same shoes for ten years. The buggers won't wear out. I would be no good to that fashionable shoe firm where you were in senior management.

How many things is that today alone when you have informed, not very stealthily either, that you are going one better than the rest of us. A retired business executive with vast experience of the world and finance savvy (ignoring the gold).

Why don't you get a big drum.

I enjoy sharing my journeys, and for having my travel blog for four years, it's gotten over 36,000 hits from around the world.
It's obvious we live in different worlds where I love to share experiences about my life with people.

Your conclusion that traveling the world is a ridiculous idea only shows how limited your perspective about life on this planet.

That you didn't staple your bank balance on your shirt only proves you have some brain left, but that's the only area of common sense - it seems. People already arrived at the conclusion that you're a nut.

I have over a dozen pairs of shoes, many left over from my working at Florsheim Shoe Company over four decades ago - and they still look new. You see, quality has value in this world.

You lack quality in every aspect of your life. You prove it with every post you make.

It was common sense which inspired the idea you silly moo-cow. The easiest way, that's common sense, of telling everybody what a big cheese I was. If I was moved to list all the things I was trying to avoid I would be here all night. I once slept on a bench in a bus shelter to avoid hotels. A chap inside an airport is like a fly on a web except that he's allowed to get free so he can go round again.

What better way to spend your time over your local visit to the pub. LOL
Bring it on!

Were you so drunk you couldn't make it home to your own bed?

Why don't you tell us about life where you live when you're not so bored with it you have to blow a few grand to escape. Your kid's inheritance too.

Are there no ladies at checkout interfaces in your area who remind you of the way we treat women these days. They are doing eight hours at it you know. Not just the few minutes when you are there.

I have to jump in here.
Spendius, how in the world can you seriously think that seeing the world is a ridiculous idea?
There is so much to see and experience that you are missing out on, not to mention the history, art, culture and cuisine. While I do like the UK, having spent time there while I was in the military, it isn't the end all, be all that you might think it is.
I traveled all over England while I was there, but I also took advantage of the opportunities to go to the continent and travel there.

You are mistaken if you think that foreign travel is silly.

Minimum wage laws are federal, all states have them.

Wow!
Hi, MM. We haven't seen you for a spell.
I hope you have been well.

It certainly speeds up the death of the planet (all of that carbon generated!) , and ruins the best naturally beautiful places remaining today. Tourists are like locusts.

I posted an article here a couple months ago that was predicting a bubble in the rental housing market, that investment bankers were buying up rental properties at an alarming rate and then bundling and selling the mortgages on the dirivitives market much the same way they did to create the 2007/2008 bubble and crash. The article was warning of a threat of repeat occurrence if it continued unregulated.


Here in Albuquerque, you can't drive more than a few blocks without seeing signs taped everywhere saying "we buy houses, sight unseen!"


Edited to add a link to the article I referred to.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/04/wall-street-rentals_n_4892205.html

I dont see where the bubble comes in....if you want to have a roof over your head and you are one of the majority who does not have the ability to buy under the new rules then you have to pay what they charge. Most rentals are bought with cash anyway, there is no mortgage to bundle.

Thomas Piketty: Capital in the Twenty-first Century

Because it is impossible to see the world. It is not easy to see up the block.



Yeah--I know. I intend keeping it that way.

What about the history, art, culture and cuisine? Reciting that mantra doesn't necessarily mean anything that I can see.

I lost count of the number of intrepid explorers who said "Eeeeeh--it's grand to get back in your own bed", when they reappeared in the pub after spending a fortune on getting away from those they are addressing.

The thinner you spread yourself the more you resemble a stain. That's why I only come on A2K.

I heard that there are a lot of Chinese buyers with cash to spare.

I don't think there will be a bubble in the rental housing market. Many areas with jobs are increasing rents, and the cost of owning is becoming more difficult for the middle class.

I'm not sure whose buying those bonds, but it seems to me that those purchasing those bonds don't have much in the way of protecting their investment if it goes belly up. It seems only one company is trading those rental backed bonds, not the big banks and financial institutions similar to what happened in 2008-2009.

The investment environment is much different today, and those trading in those bonds don't represent the amounts necessary to impact our banks and the total financial institutions.

It's only an opinion based on gut feeling, and from reading the business articles on a daily basis.

The article is a little over the top and seems to use the activist letter as it's basis to describe bonds as being similar to derivatives. They aren't that close. Bonds are similar to the bonds any company sells to raise money. Bond holders have rights that derivative holders don't.