Archive for October, 2006

Date: October 31st, 2006, Filed under Accountability and Responsibility

One of our closests friends Rebecca Georgakis passed away this morning peacefully after a 4 year battle with brain cancer. She was in her early 20s, and married to one of my closest friends and oldest business partner, Christos. They have been married just short of one year.

This is one of those situations that brings tears to my eyes for two reasons: out of love for the family, and out of selfishness in my own life. I can not imagine losing my closest friends and loved ones so early in their lives. My significant other and I argue just like anyone — but not over money or over time or over infidelity or any of the usual suspects. We usually disagree over economics and politics (ha!). Today’s a great day to put that to bed.

Read this entire article at the accountability and responsibility site.

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Date: October 30th, 2006, Filed under Anarcho-capitalism

Christ did not vote. He didn’t. He didn’t talk about voting, He didn’t promote Christians to support government or Caesar. There is no reason to think He would have supported it. He didn’t tell people to pass off their responsibilities to anyone else (not government, not charities, not anyone) — He said to do it yourself. Help the needy. Be peaceful. Love others. Be humble. Sacrifice yourself.

Read this entire article at the anarcho-capitalism site.

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Date: October 30th, 2006, Filed under Gold Investment

Just posted an updated barrel of goods versus gold chart at the gold investment site.

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Date: October 30th, 2006, Filed under Housing Bubble

A reader of my old “mobile home millionaire” newsletter has been talking to me for a year now, but the past 6 months he’s been quiet. Sunday I received an interesting e-mail that I wanted to repost, with his permission. The rest of this article is the e-mail, followed by my comments. I edited the e-mail a little bit for clarity, spelling and grammar, and removed a few personal comments. I also asked him for some more details to add to the e-mail so people understand a bit more about his background. Read this entire article at the housing bubble site.

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Date: October 24th, 2006, Filed under Anarcho-capitalism

I live in an odd town — right between an middle/upper class caucasion town and a lower/middle class hispanic town. They feed off each other in amazing ways — the hispanics who worked in the caucasian-owned restaurants just 10 years ago now co-own their own restaurants in the hispanic area. 4 huge fresh markets in the hispanic town have almost all latino signage, but their customer base is probably 50% caucasian. The hispanic town is a symbol of a booming market, with new stores going up every week that cater to the latino crowd (usually petite clothing sizes, culture-specific clothing and shoes, and even car stereo stores pertaining to the latino music culture). The caucasian town keeps forcing residents to shop elsewhere, recently with another sales tax increase (on restaurants!) and a push to a no-smoking policy. The police in the caucasian town are now 100% about traffic tickets instead of about protecting the citizens from the growing number of thefts and robberies.

But there’s a problem. As this blossoming hispanic town grew, the vultures at the INS have been watching closer every day. One business owner that lives in my community recently fled to his native country (Guatemala) because he was tipped off that the INS was ready to shut him down and ship him off. According to relatives, he extracted all the equity from his home (worth around $300,000 and paid off entirely) and took off. I know we won’t hear from him again, he showed me pictures a few years ago of the mansions he built in Guatemala. From what I know, he left 20 employees behind who had no idea how to continue his home-improvement business.

Read this entire article at the anarcho-capitalism site.

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Date: October 23rd, 2006, Filed under Housing Bubble

Someone I worked with years ago is feeling pretty lucky about the house they’re trying to sell. They feel good because they don’t really understand the math involved in the process of what they’re losing. I feel bad for them, but after a few hours total of repeated explanations I gave, they still can’t see that 1 does not always equal 1 when it comes to price changes.

I believe they bought their house for US$400,000 in 2004 — quite shy of the peak value of the property which was supposed to be about US$480,000 in mid-2006. This is a 20% upswing, a gain in value in pure dollars. In terms of real value gained, it is hard to say — how much value had the dollar lost in 1 year in terms of what they bought and their lifestyle?

Read this entire article at the housing bubble site.

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