Nevada leads U.S. in investor-owned loan failures
In Nevada’s prime mortgage market, 29% of loans went to investors in 2005 and 32% of current defaults are to investors.
Although the reporter’s language is a tad unclear, in Nevada’s subprime mortgage market I think 14% of loans went to investors, and 24% of defaults are to investors.
'LAS VEGAS DODGED A BULLET': Chlorine-hauling tanker rolls free
It could have gone either way.
For a brief slice of time Wednesday morning, the difference between disaster and a normal day in Las Vegas was hitched to a runaway train tanker loaded with hazardous chlorine gas.
The tanker, which escaped the Arden train yard, located south of state Route 160, picked up speed on the downhill and cut a 20-mile swath through the urban heart of Clark County, racing west of the resort corridor and past densely populated neighborhoods around the Union Pacific tracks.
When I heard that an unmanned rail car carrying chlorine gas had rolled through the Las Vegas Valley yesterday, I figured that it had gone at a leisurely pace.
Boy, was I wrong: it hit 50 miles per hour!
It's hard to fathom the level of incompetence that someone must have to allow a train car filled with deadly gas to accidentally leave the station. It's a miracle that there weren't any trains coming in the opposite direction.
The car traveled about 20 miles on the tracks; according to the police, the entire incident lasted from 8.49am to 9.05am, sixteen minutes.
If the car were traveling at 50mph, it could only cover about 13 miles in those sixteen minutes. So either:
- the car was going faster than 50mph
- the police weren't notified until it had already gone 7 miles
- it didn't really go twenty miles
Scary.
In 1991, residential mortgage debt totaled about 50% of GDP. Now it's about 83% of GDP. During that same time, the homeownership rate increased by about 8%. The median home price also kept pace with GDP growth. Now, however, the New York Times reports that the median home price will fall.
Here is a montage I put together of the first 0:15 seconds of each answer given by the top tier Democratic candidates in last Sunday's debate.
It's an interesting way of looking at the candidates.
By the way, in the debate itself, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama each had about fifteen minutes to speak. John Edwards was given ten minutes. Also, Clinton gave shorter questions to more answers, so she appears in the video for the most time, followed by Obama, and then Edwards.
A: They cheat!
By ARNOLD M. KNIGHTLY
REVIEW-JOURNALIn the big money world of casino security, Steve Forte played like a high roller.
Harrah's Entertainment, the world's largest gaming company, bought copies of his books and videos to give to employees.
Forte's Web site boasts of consulting work with gaming companies and law enforcement agencies around the world that would have made him privy to the gambling industry's most sensitive secrets.
"The rest of us are small change compared to him," said Bill Zender, a gaming consultant for Last Resort Consulting and a longtime friend of Forte. "There is nobody out there in the industry right now that you can put on the same level."
But Forte's reputation took a heavy hit with his June 7 arrest in Atlantic City for allegedly conspiring to scam high-stakes poker games in a private room at the Borgata.
16.5% of Barry Bonds lifetime plate appearances have come while batting 1st in the lineup (Aaron only had 4 such appearances).
During his first 13 seasons, 25% of his PAs came while leading off. He averaged a HR every 27.6 PAs while hitting 1st. Batting lower in the order he averaged a HR every 18 PAs during this stretch. By comparison, during Aaron’s first 13 seasons, he hit a HR every 19.3 PAs.
Last September, a good friend of mine from college was in town. She came over to my house with her husband and their two young children, both boys. (Great kids, I might add!)
We spent the afternoon watching college football while her boys watched Shrek. Then we decided to head out for a barbecue dinner. Right before leaving, one of my friend's sons had to go to the bathroom. For him, peeing while standing was a relatively new experience, but he seemed to accomplish the task without major incident. (Apparently he hadn't yet learned about closing doors!)
A couple of days later, I began to notice quite a foul smell coming from that bathroom. Ugh! It was horrid. I figured that the kid must have sprayed all over the place. So I dutifully scrubbed the toilet, both inside and out, and even mopped the tile floor. To fill the mop bucket I used the bathtub. (This is a relevant detail.)
Wala! The foul odor was gone.
Well, about two weeks ago I began to smell the exact same aroma. So gross. I started to feel guilty for having blamed the young man for the stink. Obviously, I figured, the smell was a result of my bachelor-esque habit of not cleaning the bathroom as often as I should. Still, I toughed it out, electing to close the door. At the time, the smell was subtle, not overpowering.
Well yesterday it reached a breaking point, or a stinking point I should say. When I went shopping this morning, I purchased all sorts of cleaning agents to tackle this problem.
Then I realized something. The foul odor had gotten worse only after I had opened the shower curtain to adjust the blinds in the bathroom.
Could there be a dead animal in my shower tub? After all, I never use it. Or worse, could their be some sort of decaying scorpion colony or some other exotic southwestern bug?
Nope. Nothing.
Then I got another thought. What would happen if I turned on the water? Maybe the water would be brown and gross. So I turned it on. Nope. It ran clean. I let it run for a minute, just to be sure.
Then I left the bathroom to go get the cleaning supplies, ready to tackle my chore. When I returned, I noticed that the smell was gone. Huh? What had happened?
Could it be the smell was emanating from my drain? The thought had never occured to me. Yet it seemed the only logical explanation. How else could the smell just vanish?
To be sure, I filled the tub with hot water, and then let it drain. After two hours, the smell was still gone.
I desperately hoped that my problem was solved. So far, it appears that it has been solved. But why?
I did some Googling, and here's the best explanation I could find for what happened.
The traps in floor drains—or for that matter, any drains that haven’t been used often—will eventually dry out. This may sound harmless enough, but a dry trap can cause a room to fill with potentially harmful sewer gas from the septic tank or the city sewer system. Phew!
Eliminate this problem with a little fresh water topped with cooking oil (Photo 1). The oil floats on top of the water and seals it against evaporation. Your drain will hold water in the trap much longer.
I'm pretty sure this is it. I haven't used that drain in months -- I never shower there. My last house guests were here in May. And as you can guess, it's both hot and dry in Vegas. Things dry out fast. So now I've just gotta' keep it wet, and maybe add some oil to help keep it that way.
Thanks The Family Handyman for helping me figure this out. (Well, I hope I've figured it out.)
And I hope my friend's son will forgive me for having blamed him for stinking up my house! (To be fair, Inever did complain about it!)
Depending on your perspective, this is could be a good argument for or a good argument against a flat tax. But it certainly indicates that if everything were taxed equally, the impact would profound.
Meanwhile, another study has found a correlation between breast implants and suicide -- women who got the artificial enlargements were 3x more likely to commit suicide than their natural peers. I wonder if this is a case of correlation or causation or a mixture of both. Most people probably would assume that the implants are an indicator of a pre-existing psychological condition. That seems plausible, but I would love to see a study which controlled for this, perhaps identifying women who wanted the surgery but were unable to get it for financial or other reasons. If their suicide rate is lower, it might indicate that the enhancement itself played a role. This would serve as a very interesting window into our culture.
For the record, I'm not a fan of the fake. Unfortunately, I live in Las Vegas, the breast implant capitol of the world -- at least when you include the tourist population.
p.s.: Another interesting study would be to compare the suicide rates amongst women who receive the implants as part of reconstructive surgery after trauma like mastectomy compared to women who get it for purely size-related reasons.
p.p.s.: I am the master of unintentionally walking into good puns. I didn't even realize until after I wrote this post that flat tax and breast implants made a sort of odd pairing. And there I go with another pun.
I hate giving Bud free advertising, especially since I'm a Miller guy, but I love their ads.
What do you think the true odds are that Barry Bonds would hit home run number 755 -- the one tying him with Hank Aaron -- off of a pitcher who had used steroids?
I ask because it happened.
With talk of primaries and caucuses moving into December, how about this idea?
Randomly divide the country into 15 equal groups -- 29 congressional districts each.
Once per month over the course of 4 months (January to April) have a primary election on the first weekend of the month.
The first election would be of 1 of 15 groups.
The second election would be of 2 of 15 groups.
The third election would be of 4 of 15 groups.
The final election would be of 8 of 15 groups.
This system would make the primary national while still giving lower-tier candidates a shot. It would still require that a candidate have at least some organization in order to win (good bye Mike Gravel).
In order to ensure that the party's rank and file had a voice in the nominee, you could require that the first group to vote have also on average voted for the previous party nominee in the general. (Democrats and Republicans might therefore have different regional primaries.)
The key thing is that this system would preserve what is good about our current process while discarding the hyper-focus on Iowa, South Carolina, and New Hampshire.
Everybody hates Bonds because of steroids, right?
Also everybody seems to concede that 1999 or 2000 was the year in which he started using them, right?
It just so happens that up until the 1999 season, Barry Bonds had played in exactly 2,000 games, hitting 445 home runs.
Hank Aaron had played in 1,964 games in the nearest full season break. Through that point, he hit 442 home runs. The following season he played in 155 games, hitting 39 home runs. So we can estimate that through 2,000 games, Aaron hit 451 home runs.
I just wrote the following e-mail to my season ticket account representative at the Mariners. If the story I read (referenced below) is true, then I am furious. On the one hand, MLB gives local teams total control over TV. As a result, given that I live in Vegas, if I buy their Extra Innings television package, games from the following teams are usually blacked out: A's, Giants, Padres, Diamondbacks, and Angels. Why? Because those teams claim Vegas as their "home market." Bullshit. MLB should step in and tell teams to stop blocking customers from being able to buy their product.
On the flipside, MLB is now dictating to teams how they can do secondary ticket resales. Ticket sales truly is a local thing, and should be handled on a team-by-team basis. The Mariners have an outstanding secondary ticket resale mechanism. I basically set the price and up to 2 hours before a game, a fan can buy tickets from me, sometimes for less than face value, sometimes for much more. Now MLB is going to ban this system and make everybody use StubHub. Since StubHub requires fans to actually mail tickets to other fans, the cutoff before games is several days, not 2 hours. (Under the current system, tickets are e-mailed.)
Moreover, the current system allows me to forward tickets to my friends. StubHub does not support this.
For the past 12 years, I have averaged about $10,000 per year in spending with the Seattle Mariners. So what do I get for having spent $120,000? The idiotic MLB coming in and telling the Mariners how to handle ticket resales, which really should be the last damn thing the MLB is worried about.
Since I've been selling my tickets while living in Vegas, I've eked out a small profit. Eventually I'll move back to Seattle and start going to games again. But until then, this decision will cost me thousands of dollars. MLB can go to hell for all I care. They obviously hate their customers.
Here's the letter I sent to my ticket rep.:
Hi ****,
I just read an article (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2165537,00.asp) saying that the MLB has just signed a deal with StubHub that will replace services like the Ticket Marketplace with some StubHub version.
I am sending you feedback in the hopes that you can pass it along to the powers that be – the current Ticket Marketplace, which allows for the electronic redistribution of tickets, is a really good service.
This Stubhub replacement is a HORRIBLE service since you need to physically mail tickets once you sell them. Now I can sell tickets on the day of game. With Stubhub, you need to do it several days in advance unless you are willing to meet the buyer before the game.
If this article is correct and the Mariners will be forced to stop using Ticketmaster, it is an affront to Season Ticket holders. We pay good money for our tickets, and to have the MLB corporate headquarters big foot around telling local teams how to handle tickets is really very, very bad customer service.
Currently, I can forward tickets to friends. With Stubhub, I cannot do this.
I hope the Mariners organization and others can stand up for their season ticket holders and send this plan where it belongs: to the trash.
Thanks,
Jed
I wonder how long it will take Mayor Nickels to try and parlay the tragic bridge collapse in Minnesota into more support for his plan to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct with a tunnel?
Tony Snow is already pointing fingers, blaming the the state of Minnesota. What a classless piece of waste that man is.
Later in the morning, the White House said that an inspection two years ago found structural deficiencies in the bridge. White House press secretary Tony Snow said it rated 50 on a scale of 120 for structural stability.
"This doesn't mean there was a risk of failure, but if an inspection report identifies deficiencies, the state is responsible for taking corrective actions," he said.
The Mariners eked out a win last night against the Angels, keeping them 3 back. I still think the Ms will fade, but you never know.
The Ms are 12 games over .500 -- and have outscored their opponents by 2 runs.
The Diamondbacks are 11 games over .500 -- but their opponents have outscored them by 23 runs.
To have been outscored by 23 runs and still have a .500 record is absolutely remarkable, let alone a record 11 games over .500. Since 1980, only 1 team has been outscored by more runs and had more wins -- the 1984 Mets. the 1987 Twins were outscored by 20 runs and won the World Series. Roughly 90% of the teams that were outscored had losing records. Those with winning records averaged a .514 record. The D'Backs are .550 and the Ms are .557.
Last month, I noted that the Yankees were under .500 despite having outscored their opponents by 72 runs. I suggested they were underrated and would have a big second half. Since my post, they've gone 16-6 and have outscored their opponents by 65 runs in that stretch alone. They have closed the gap with the Red Sox to 7 games. The Red Sox have the best record in baseball, but the Yankees have outscored their opponents by even more than the Red Sox.
The Yankees are on pace to outscore their opponents by 189 runs. Since 1980, 17 teams (2.4%) have outscored their opponents by at least that much. 6 of those teams went to the World Series and 4 won it. Their average record was about 104-58.
Why am I so focused on run score differentials? Because you win games by outscoring your opponents. Looking at net runs is a way of weeding out luck. Net runs has a .93 correlation to a team's winning percentage, at least since 1980.
People have placed a lot of emphasis 1-run games, thinking that is a good measure of a team's clutch performance. All I can say is cognitive bias. The correlation of 1-run winning percentage to overall winning percentage is .59 -- just a little lower than .93.
The Luxor is undergoing a major overhaul. In general, it seems like a very smart move. But I have to wonder if "CatHouse" is really all that good a name for a restaurant? I mean, I get the punny reference to a whorehouse. But how cool or appetizing is that? And who really wants to eat cat? Who knows. Maybe HBO is sponsoring it?
Recent Comments