tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post616678209577095726..comments2024-03-29T05:14:33.223-07:00Comments on Steve Sailer: iSteve: Why the Tech Bubble wasn't as bad for us as the Housing BubbleUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger38125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-43857938324933730402009-04-09T14:24:00.000-07:002009-04-09T14:24:00.000-07:00I think Thrasymachus has it right. With the tech ...I think Thrasymachus has it right. With the tech bubble, the people speculating knew they were speculating. The VCs knew it was speculation, the folks who bought the stocks in the IPOs knew, the employees getting stock options knew. Because everyone knew it was speculation, most people bet money they could afford to lose. The people at the bottom who were hurt tended to be employees of startups, who'd been paid for their 80 hour weeks in stock options that had a small chance of making them rich. And those people knew they were taking a risk, and the ones who couldn't afford such risks mostly didn't take them.<BR/><BR/>With the housing market, almost everyone seems to have convinced themselves that it wasn't speculation. Home buyers signing interest-only mortgages with a 5 year baloon payment were convinced that they were *not* speculating, but instead were investing in their future. Even flippers thought they had a near-sure thing, and that they weren't doing anything *really* risky. <BR/><BR/>And banks and other big, sophisticated investors used structured finance to convince themselves (or at least their regulators) that they were investing, but not speculating. Even though it turned out that they were speculating, and that their risk models were crap, they didn't think so. So people at all levels treated their speculation in the housing bubble as safe and sensible investment, rather than as buying lottery tickets.none of the abovenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-75796173736285616002009-04-08T18:58:00.000-07:002009-04-08T18:58:00.000-07:00"One example: The dimensions of chip circuitry dro..."One example: The dimensions of chip circuitry dropped dramatically because of demands for processing power.....That's just one area. There are hundreds or thousands more."<BR/><BR/>Okay you made a good case for that one, and there may have been a few others. Still I suspect that this would have been done anyway, even without the desire of vacuous teenage couch-potatoes to vicariously mow-down zombies, or of busy soccer moms to order Alpo online.<BR/><BR/>If one looks at technological progress, by whatever measure one might like to use (patents awarded each year, technical papers published each year, etc.) even stretching back for hundreds of years, it would be fit pretty well by a single exponential curve with a single e-folding time. There really aren't any revolutions in technology.Mr. Anonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-67512834159202738792009-04-08T13:48:00.000-07:002009-04-08T13:48:00.000-07:00How the hell was I supposed to fit all that on a S...<I>How the hell was I supposed to fit all that on a Segway, PUMA, transit bus, or any other type of enviro-friendly transportation?</I><BR/><BR/>Do you think young Lincoln rode around in a four-in-hand?<BR/><BR/>If car makers build it, the public will stuff it. What did we do before Ford Excursions? Kids played in the backyard with sticks, not in a gym across town with bags and bags of stuff.<BR/><BR/>Lighten your load. Life is not a safari and you don't need to carry all/most of what you own.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-40624435162657342452009-04-08T11:20:00.000-07:002009-04-08T11:20:00.000-07:00Possibly average folk were able to leverage more b...<I>Possibly average folk were able to leverage more borrowing against their real estate than against stock portfolios.</I><BR/><BR/>Normal people don't borrow against a liquid asset like stock - they sell it. To tap the value of a home (and still have a place to live) you either sell and move to a cheaper place or you <I>must</I> borrow against its value. Tech stocks weren't being used as collateral nearly as often as homes.<BR/><BR/><I>Heads of State do not bow to royalty, at least not to foreign royalty.</I><BR/><BR/>If that head of state is American, then there is no other kind but "foreign." A head of state wouldn't bow to his own royalty because he would be bowing to himself. Where a country has a monarch that monarch is the head of state. Gordon Brown, Stephen Harper, etc. are merely the heads of their respective governments.<BR/><BR/>There were strong Muslim overtones to Obama's bow. As protector of the Muslim holy city of Mecca, supposedly all Muslims are obligated to bow to the Saudi King. Whether Obama was saying, with that bow, that he was a Muslim or whether he was simply trying to ingratiate himself with Muslims, his full, ass-high-in-the-air bow, was a slight all Americans. When Obama stuck out his ass for that bow, he was showing us the kind of person he is. He then spent the rest of that trip apologizing for the "sins" of America - slavery, Hiroshima, Iraq, ad nauseum.<BR/><BR/><I>The Segway cannot be used to transport children safely or legally. A city which refuses to have reasonable public transit but which allows or worse encourages Segway usage is announcing a giant fuck you to parents.</I><BR/><BR/>Typical day, back when I was in college: go to school, with books & laptop; other books that didn't fit in backpack in the trunk. Eat packed lunch. Change into work uniform and go to work. Go to gym, change into gym clothes and work out. After gym, perhaps a stop at the grocery or some other store.<BR/><BR/>So: book bag, other books, lunch, work clothes, gym bag, groceries. How the hell was I supposed to fit all that on a Segway, PUMA, transit bus, or any other type of enviro-friendly transportation?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-74600639274506634712009-04-08T10:56:00.000-07:002009-04-08T10:56:00.000-07:00What's wrong with having low IQ's. Must we be all ...<I>What's wrong with having low IQ's. Must we be all super bright? cant the loq IQ's be left alone to continue with their lives without other's harping on about it.</I><BR/><BR/>Nothing's wrong with low IQs. And the low IQs usually are left alone to continue with their lives. The same cannot be said for those with IQ over 120, who have to fight every second to justify their lifestyle and often their very existence.<BR/><BR/>Nobody really has the right to dictate to others how to run their personal lives. But when the masses of normal people, in their ignorance and arrogance, do just that, it can be hard to keep an even temper. It doesn't mean that I hate them, though.<BR/><BR/><I>Besides, my good deluded friends. if you lot are so clever and know what otherr's do not; how come you are not the ones setting the agenda.</I><BR/><BR/>Throughout human history, the ones setting the agenda were rarely the smartest of the bunch. They were typically the meanest, nastiest, and the most evil. These SOBs were tolerated mostly because they were the ones who can best protect the tribe from the SOBs running the other tribes.<BR/><BR/>There were some exceptions: Classical Athens, Han Dynasty China, pre-1945 America.<BR/><BR/><I>How come you are always complaining about liberals, neocons, new york intellectuals etc.</I><BR/><BR/>It's not because these elites (and perceived elites) are dumb. After all, they know how to look after themselves. Most of them are composed of 100-120 IQers (and the occasional token 120+er).<BR/><BR/>It may be because of their dishonesty, corruption, hypocrisy, incompetence, short-sightedness, greed, psychopathy, destructiveness, and all that jazz.<BR/><BR/><I>Could the answer be that you are not as clever as you think, and perhaps your own IQ's are not that good too. Could it be that you are part of the same people that you like so much to despise?</I><BR/><BR/>I can't speak for others. I can only speak for myself.<BR/><BR/>My IQ has been tested at over 120, which puts me in a different class than the IQ 100-120 elite. I really don't want to be a part of such elite, or be the Great Philosopher-King of the world, or any such ambition. All I ask for is a little justice.<BR/><BR/>Consider why the suicide rate is so high for those with high IQs, and so low for those with low IQs.<BR/><BR/>If blacks, Hispanics, Arabs, and the other pet tribes of the left had high suicide rates, the liberals would be screaming bloody genocide!Epicureannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-85858344835683136152009-04-08T09:57:00.000-07:002009-04-08T09:57:00.000-07:00Please, IQ is very important but this does not mea...Please, IQ is very important but this does not mean we have to try to force it into every discussion. This current economic crisis has nothign to do with declining IQ and everything to do with declining economies. In case you have not noticed, over the last decade or so the best parts of Western economies have been uprooted and transferred to Asia. <BR/><BR/>The spectacular rise of China is very closely related to the economic decline of the West. You simply cannot get rid of most of your real, productive economy and yet maintain rising, or even constant, standards of living. Westerners have been trying to maintain constant standards of living by using debt to make up for lost economic activity, but that can never work in the long run, and last year it stopped working when the debt came due. It's as simple as that. It doesn't matter what the average IQ of your population is, if your corporate and government elites choose to give away your economy for personal profit even though their own high IQs let them perfectly understand the consequences for the country as a whole.Felixhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16612544330851890582noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-9897505313747164362009-04-08T09:45:00.000-07:002009-04-08T09:45:00.000-07:00Google maps has street level views of Compton if y...Google maps has street level views of Compton if you are interested in what it looks like. The lots are all fenced (typically chainlink about 3 ft high along sidewalk) but otherwise don't look too bad.James B. Shearerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13452342984383895221noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-19609674623127097482009-04-08T09:30:00.000-07:002009-04-08T09:30:00.000-07:00What is this segway stupidity? What happened to wa...<I>What is this segway stupidity? What happened to walking? Americans need to do more, not less walking.</I><BR/><BR/>Walking is too cheap. It's for <I>nuuuurds</I> and other losers.Epicureannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-13456294043890170292009-04-08T08:38:00.000-07:002009-04-08T08:38:00.000-07:00Anon: "Huh? What foundries were built by Amazon or...Anon: "Huh? What foundries were built by Amazon or Google? What advances in physics and chemistry were made by game developers dreaming up new zombies to shoot, or by programmers writing HTML code to sell dog food over the internet?"<BR/><BR/>One example: The dimensions of chip circuitry dropped dramatically because of demands for processing power. During the dot.com bubble money freely flowed into tech centers and universities to get over the tech/sci humps to do this. Going from 1 um to 50 nm wasn't trivial. In and around that lower number, quantum effects, i.e. local electron states become significant can throw circuit logical for a loop. Depositing materials at these small dimensions was no small chemical feat either. That's just one area. There are hundreds or thousands more. <BR/><BR/>Entire volumes could be written about sci/tech accomplishments go unnoticed by the public on which civilization quickly adapt and become very dependent on. The zombie shooting software demands more processing power, in turn that power can be used for MRI imaging.<BR/><BR/>I have close friends and colleagues that lost jobs after the dot.com bust but many quickly picked up and started their own ventures on things like medical devices, specialty chemicals, analytical chemistry instrumentation.... The American economy depends on these types of pioneer nerds. <BR/><BR/>Could the sci/tech accomplishments of the dot.com bubble been accomplished without the fluff? Perhaps, but it's hard sell to get seed/venture capital from the public without the fluff.Frankhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12789153657442637138noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-41501674764619118242009-04-08T08:01:00.000-07:002009-04-08T08:01:00.000-07:00I hadn't realised the disparity betwen the $3 ...I hadn't realised the disparity betwen the $3 & $10 trillion bubbles & it was surprising. <BR/><BR/>Some possible reasons, such is the size of the disparity I think it would need all of them & possibly some others to explain it:<BR/><BR/>The dotcom money never actually existed - those who invested thousands & "made" millions hadn't seen it, spent it or even handled it whereas with houses somebody at some time had put real bricks on top of each other consuming real wealth to do it.<BR/><BR/>House prices were rising anyway so that took up the slack - this is slightly self fulfilling because it basicly comes down to there wasn't a recession because there wasn't one.<BR/><BR/>The house crash isn't the the real cause, it is merely the trigger. The cause is that, because of EPA & other government rules, real production has been going to China & the more the economy got hollowed out the more inevitable the crash - dotcom merely happened earlier in the cycle. <BR/><BR/>And my favourite:<BR/>The bailout. Bankruptcy, of financial institutions or anything else, cauterises the wound, endless transfusions without closing the wound don't work.neil craighttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09157898238945726349noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-18378284045783317962009-04-08T04:49:00.000-07:002009-04-08T04:49:00.000-07:00Am I the only only one who thinks "settle down, Be...Am I the only only one who thinks "settle down, Beavis" when crazy99 gets himself going?<BR/><BR/>And t99, your inability to distinguish between "before" and "after" is something to work on.robnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-5461211282335651032009-04-08T00:38:00.000-07:002009-04-08T00:38:00.000-07:00hey testing99: that comment you made a few threads...hey testing99: that comment you made a few threads back on concealed carry firearms.....'concealed carry is hated by women because it empowers beta males'........was classic insanity. <BR/><BR/>yeah that was as entertaining as evil neocon's over medicated 'massive muslim coastal speedboat invasion' claims from yesteryear.wake upnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-89602758847672877782009-04-08T00:29:00.000-07:002009-04-08T00:29:00.000-07:00Ha, the quality of posts are really horrible if I ...Ha, the quality of posts are really horrible if I may say so. You dimwits are obsessed with other people's supposed low IQ's. <BR/><BR/>What's wrong with having low IQ's. Must we be all super bright? cant the loq IQ's be left alone to continue with their lives without other's harping on about it.<BR/><BR/>Besides, my good deluded friends. if you lot are so clever and know what otherr's do not; how come you are not the ones setting the agenda. How come you are always complaining about liberals, neocons, new york intellectuals etc. <BR/>Could the answer be that you are not as clever as you think, and perhaps your own IQ's are not that good too. Could it be that you are part of the same people that you like so much to despise? <BR/><BR/>Just wondering.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-57642797000397227982009-04-07T22:48:00.000-07:002009-04-07T22:48:00.000-07:00" Frank said...The dot.com bubble produced the hum..." Frank said...<BR/><BR/>The dot.com bubble produced the human capital, hardware-software engineers, foundries, advances in physics and chemistries that will enable growth in real wealth in the upcoming decades."<BR/><BR/>Huh? What foundries were built by Amazon or Google? What advances in physics and chemistry were made by game developers dreaming up new zombies to shoot, or by programmers writing HTML code to sell dog food over the internet?<BR/><BR/>I must have missed this Golden Era of science and industry.Mr. Anonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-5115093941782914962009-04-07T21:51:00.000-07:002009-04-07T21:51:00.000-07:00What is this segway stupidity? What happened to w...What is this segway stupidity? What happened to walking? Americans need to do more, not less walking.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-4097943960457416192009-04-07T21:48:00.000-07:002009-04-07T21:48:00.000-07:00Why the Tech Bubble wasn't as bad for us as the Ho...<I>Why the Tech Bubble wasn't as bad for us as the Housing Bubble</I><BR/><BR/>A surfeit of IQ 120-140 knowledge industry workers can quickly re-organize themselves to do something different which is productive & lucrative.<BR/><BR/>But legions of IQ 75-85 aboriginal drywall mudders simply cannot.<BR/><BR/><B>testing99:</B> <I>...BY CONTRAST -- the Housing Bubble ended up having crummy mortgages chopped up and sold as various garbage securities, and then traded globally, and then insured (THAT'S where the big risk was) and this was done GLOBALLY...</I><BR/><BR/>What made this crisis "global" was nihilism in the civilized world & fertility rates decimated by the birth control pill.<BR/><BR/>40 years ago, the civilized peoples of the world quit making babies, and now there are no young up-and-comers to whom the real estate can be sold.<BR/><BR/>Or at least not sold at the prices which people thought they'd be able to get for their real estate [when it came time to cash in and move on to the retirement community] - an IQ 75-85 drywall mudder will never be able to afford the same kind of mortgage that an IQ 120-140 knowledge worker could have afforded [had that knowledge worker been brought into this world back in the 1970s, which, of course, he was not].Lucius Vorenusnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-57167101771271086112009-04-07T20:57:00.000-07:002009-04-07T20:57:00.000-07:00Yup. The Mexicans call it "rapto".After reading th...<I>Yup. The Mexicans call it "rapto".</I><BR/><BR/>After reading that article, Mexico now strikes me as positively Islamic.PRCalDudehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04536108855155262530noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-20248341768821024562009-04-07T19:52:00.000-07:002009-04-07T19:52:00.000-07:00"By the way, I drove through both Palmdale and Com..."By the way, I drove through both Palmdale and Compton last week, and I have to say ... they look marvelous. Practically every residential street in SoCal looks great in early Spring."<BR/><BR/>Why is this? <BR/><BR/>Do you have very pretty flora? <BR/><BR/>Do people take good care of their yards? <BR/><BR/>What?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-85282589639895352652009-04-07T19:39:00.000-07:002009-04-07T19:39:00.000-07:00"A woman fought off three would-be abductors who t..."A woman fought off three would-be abductors who tried to pull her into a white van Monday on a Hermosa Beach street, police said."<BR/><BR/>"Relax. Abducting women off the street with a dirty van is just a normal courtship ritual in most of the hellholes of the world."<BR/><BR/>Yup. The Mexicans call it "rapto".<BR/><BR/>http://libertadlatina.org/LatAm_Mexico_Rape_Victims_Find_No_Justice.htmBig Billnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-25133903770076050112009-04-07T19:30:00.000-07:002009-04-07T19:30:00.000-07:00Heh... We live in Lancaster, just north of Palmdal...Heh... We live in Lancaster, just north of Palmdale. Palmdale is rumored to be presenting itself as somewhat more upscale than Lancaster. Palmdale has been getting more of the new shopping venues, as well as more restaurants. <BR/><BR/>Hopefully, by the end of 2010 all this won't matter to me personally too much, because we are getting the h3ll out of Kalifornia permanently.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-11715832457775625002009-04-07T18:49:00.000-07:002009-04-07T18:49:00.000-07:00It's interesting that no one seems to read the mea...It's interesting that no one seems to read the meaning of the Segway and its potential adoption as an acceptable or worse preferred mode of urban transport.<BR/><BR/>The Segway cannot be used to transport children safely or legally. A city which refuses to have reasonable public transit but which allows or worse encourages Segway usage is announcing a giant fuck you to parents. It's a capitulation or worse celebration of the postWestern ideal of the city as the anti-breeder haven. Party in the city, reproduce in the burbs. O tempora o mores.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-18998420554597644912009-04-07T17:43:00.000-07:002009-04-07T17:43:00.000-07:00t99All of whom crashed at the same time due to str...t99<BR/><BR/><I>All of whom crashed at the same time due to stress by rising gas prices shooting up exponentially due to both rising India/China demand and restrictions in supply from the Gulf.</I><BR/><BR/>How many times does this have to be debunked before you stop repeating it?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-31099534141983803662009-04-07T17:15:00.000-07:002009-04-07T17:15:00.000-07:00... Slums in SoCal just don't look like slums on T...<I>... Slums in SoCal just don't look like slums on The Wire ..</I><BR/><BR/>You mean because they're mostly low-rise with lots of single-family houses? <BR/><BR/>The same thing is true in Miami. Even more true, in fact, because of the lush greenery that pops up everywhere with no need for cultivation. Drive the elevated expressways of Miami, even through the slums, and the residential streets look like modest but pretty suburbs, all green and bedecked with flowering plants and swaying palm trees (proper, tropical-paradise-type coconut palms, too, not those weird scrawny ones you have California). Even on the streets themselves, where you can see the graffiti and the hoods hanging out on the corners, it's still a lot less menacing than the crowded, high-density slums of the Northeast and Midwest.steve woodnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-19439367058213225072009-04-07T16:18:00.000-07:002009-04-07T16:18:00.000-07:00A woman fought off three would-be abductors who tr...<I>A woman fought off three would-be abductors who tried to pull her into a white van Monday on a Hermosa Beach street, police said.</I><BR/><BR/>Relax. Abducting women off the street with a dirty van is just a normal courtship ritual in most of the hellholes of the world. <BR/><BR/>Can't wait to the read the true crime stories coming out of LA in say 2011 or 2012. Official hellhole status will be designated by 2015. And probably for a lot larger area than LA County but hopefully not the entire state. <BR/><BR/>Remember: this outcome is what your elites desire. This is a controlled demolition of the U.S. economy, sovereignty, language, culture and borders. This is a big bankster takedown. Greenspan knew exactly what he was doing when he inflated the final fatal bubble with his 1% interest rates. <BR/><BR/>The great flaw in American culture is the population's capacity for buying the "We didn't realize" excuse from politicians. These aren't ignorant mistakes. This stuff is all premeditated. They envision America as an obedient component of a global government.<BR/><BR/>Next up is another false flag terror attack in order to trigger war with Iran. They will need your kids to fight in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan for the foreseeable future. They will be seeking to draw in Russia and China. This is in the Orwellian "War Against East Asia" mold.<BR/><BR/>All the while the elites will encourage much more Muslim immigration to the West which justifies ratcheting up domestic security measures against the growing terrorist threat that the Muslims themselves create.<BR/><BR/>Daylight kidnappings off the street are a sign that the plan is progressing nicely in America. Hey, you gotta crack some eggs to make an omelette.Nick Sarkozynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-70975300346870540102009-04-07T15:22:00.000-07:002009-04-07T15:22:00.000-07:00Steve, you're not getting it.The Tech Bubble depen...Steve, you're not getting it.<BR/><BR/>The Tech Bubble depended on wildly over-estimated stocks betting on technological change, ala the Railroad, Telegraph, Telephone, and electricity booms of the 19th Century.<BR/><BR/>The wildly over-valued assets, the stocks, themselves went no further (than being bought and sold).<BR/><BR/>BY CONTRAST -- the Housing Bubble ended up having crummy mortgages chopped up and sold as various garbage securities, and then traded globally, and then insured (THAT'S where the big risk was) and this was done GLOBALLY.<BR/><BR/>Not just with strawberry pickers in Fresno and Drywallers in Palmdale, but Greek vacation home builders, Spanish and French real-estate speculators "flipping that house" and English, Irish, and Icelandic middle class people buying houses they could not afford.<BR/><BR/>The problem was GLOBAL, and made worse by writing insurance against the loans based on a wildly inflated price for global housing prices.<BR/><BR/>That's WHY the former, the Dot-com crash, affected the financial market only mildly. There were not huge insurance contracts to be paid out. And why the latter, the GLOBAL housing bubble, caused a GLOBAL collapse.<BR/><BR/>Steve you'd like to blame this on Clinton-Bush policies pushing home ownership to unqualified non-Whites, but the truth is the problem was GLOBAL and caused a GLOBAL melt-down.<BR/><BR/>Bad as the "Sand State" housing melt-down was, it was a drop in the bucket compared to Europe, Canada, and elsewhere. All of whom crashed at the same time due to stress by rising gas prices shooting up exponentially due to both rising India/China demand and restrictions in supply from the Gulf.<BR/><BR/>Lessons:<BR/><BR/>1. Equities booms don't do lasting damage as long as they are confined to equities.<BR/><BR/>2. Mortgage or other instruments that can chopped up and sold as "strips" or other junk bond-type assets that have insurance written on them can be VERY deadly if ...<BR/><BR/>3. The financial system is GLOBAL and therefore creates GLOBAL risk.testing99noreply@blogger.com