Personally, I pretty agree with Ayn Rand, but, like Jennifer Burns suggests, there’s a lot missing to her philosophy.
sd_matt
July 1, 2009 @
12:31 PM
I read Atlas Shrugged a I read Atlas Shrugged a couple of months ago. I ended up finding every free moment I could to read it.
My mom reads it every five years. I asked her how she compares it to whats going on out there. She’s 65 now and says that real life is a slower version of the book. What I’m talking specifically about is how the rich, just like the poor, can be made slaves. And eventually every hard-working person, rich or poor, becomes a slave to the entitled.
Maybe people like Peter Schiff are the closest thing to John Galt.
sdgrrl
July 1, 2009 @
2:47 PM
Poor Peter Schiff…well he Poor Peter Schiff…well he definitely got the last laugh with an unfunny situation. Every once in awhile I watch videos of him on Youtube. My favorite is when he was on Fox one time and people were actually sneering at him; Ben Stein was one of them. Both Schiff and Krugman had it exactly right.
sdrealtor
July 1, 2009 @
2:55 PM
Didnt Schiff take huge losses Didnt Schiff take huge losses on his foreign positions. Not exactly right me thinks.
Anonymous
July 1, 2009 @
4:56 PM
sd_matt wrote:… real life [quote=sd_matt]… real life is a slower version of Atlas Shrugged[/quote]
So when is somebody going to invent Rearden Metal? I’ve got a bridge I need to build…
peterb
July 1, 2009 @
5:38 PM
Schiff , at one time, Schiff , at one time, recommended people get HELOC’s and put the money in Euro stocks. Ouch. Talk about worse than bad advice. Decoupling in a global economy is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard.
I think Ayn is going to be on target here as the govt will have to raise taxes a lot in the near future. The bond market will start to rise and they’ll need to get their money from the few of us left working.
patientrenter
July 1, 2009 @
6:48 PM
peterb wrote:Schiff , at one [quote=peterb]Schiff , at one time, recommended people get HELOC’s and put the money in Euro stocks. Ouch. Talk about worse than bad advice. Decoupling in a global economy is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard.
I think Ayn is going to be on target here as the govt will have to raise taxes a lot in the near future. The bond market will start to rise and they’ll need to get their money from the few of us left working.
[/quote]
HELOC the last drop of peak bubble value out of housing and put it somewhere else? What’s wrong with that plan? Beats not taking the value out, and losing it all as housing goes down.
Personally, I pretty agree with Ayn Rand, but, like Jennifer Burns suggests, there’s a lot missing to her philosophy.
[/quote]
Her greatest acolyte was Greenspan.
Enough said
peterb
July 1, 2009 @
8:07 PM
Increasing debt on ones home Increasing debt on ones home for an investment in securities is incredibly risky action. He would have looked a lot better had he said to just keep the cash in case of melt-down and home devalutation.
Decoupling, very weak and highly inaccurate analysis!
patientrenter
July 1, 2009 @
8:57 PM
Why isn’t it much better to Why isn’t it much better to extract market value from the home as real money, to be invested elsewhere?
People who made out like bandits during the bubble were those who borrowed the most to buy early on, and then extracted the most cash near the peak.
Let’s suppose two people own identical homes, both worth $400,000, with loans of $300,000. During a bubble, both homes attain a market value of $1,000,000, and crazy loans up to 100% of the market value become available. Person A does nothing. Person B HELOCs out $700,000. Five years later, the homes are worth $400,000 again. Person A owns a home with equity of $100,000. Person B is in foreclosure, and has no home equity, and has invested $700,000.
Person B is 10 steps ahead of Person A, as far as I can see.
temeculaguy
July 1, 2009 @
9:37 PM
and then follow the rest of and then follow the rest of Schiff’s advice and lose your borrowed money on a theory that went horribly wrong. What peterb is referring to about Schiff’s decoupling theory is Schiff’s belief and investment strategy that euro/asian and emerging markets will not be hurt by a downturn in the U.S., it turns out he was very wrong.
BTW Schiff may run for senator of conneticut vs chris dodd, that should be fun to watch.
I wouldn’t recommend losing I wouldn’t recommend losing money in the stock or other markets, but if you get an extra $500,000 to invest because of HELOCing to the max, you’d have an extra $250,000 even after losing 50% in the market.
I don’t pay attention to Schiff’s stock investment advice, so maybe he recommended some strategy that would have lost you 90% of extracted HELOC value, but I’m assuming he wasn’t that far wrong.
briansd1
July 1, 2009 @
8:51 PM
patb wrote:
Her greatest [quote=patb]
Her greatest acolyte was Greenspan.
Enough said[/quote]
Ayn Rand was right, people acted for their own selfish enrichment.
Greenspan trusted that the institutions would have controls in place to assure their collective preservation. That was wrong.
Just like Ayn Rand predicted, people threw collective institutional self-preservation out the window and worked to enrich themselves leaving all of us to hold the bag. That’s why Communism in Russia didn’t work.
July 1, 2009 @ 11:45 AM
I know what my summer reading
I know what my summer reading will be.
http://www.amazon.com/Goddess-Market-Rand-American-Right/dp/0195324870/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246473779&sr=8-1
Interesting that Ayn Rand’s book is still selling well still today.
http://www.hereandnow.org/stand-alone-player/?fileUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bu.edu%2Fwbur%2Fstorage%2F2009%2F07%2Fhereandnow_0701_2.mp3&fileTitle=Ayn%20Rand%20&%20Economic%20Collapse
Personally, I pretty agree with Ayn Rand, but, like Jennifer Burns suggests, there’s a lot missing to her philosophy.
July 1, 2009 @ 12:31 PM
I read Atlas Shrugged a
I read Atlas Shrugged a couple of months ago. I ended up finding every free moment I could to read it.
My mom reads it every five years. I asked her how she compares it to whats going on out there. She’s 65 now and says that real life is a slower version of the book. What I’m talking specifically about is how the rich, just like the poor, can be made slaves. And eventually every hard-working person, rich or poor, becomes a slave to the entitled.
Maybe people like Peter Schiff are the closest thing to John Galt.
July 1, 2009 @ 2:47 PM
Poor Peter Schiff…well he
Poor Peter Schiff…well he definitely got the last laugh with an unfunny situation. Every once in awhile I watch videos of him on Youtube. My favorite is when he was on Fox one time and people were actually sneering at him; Ben Stein was one of them. Both Schiff and Krugman had it exactly right.
July 1, 2009 @ 2:55 PM
Didnt Schiff take huge losses
Didnt Schiff take huge losses on his foreign positions. Not exactly right me thinks.
July 1, 2009 @ 4:56 PM
sd_matt wrote:… real life
[quote=sd_matt]… real life is a slower version of Atlas Shrugged[/quote]
So when is somebody going to invent Rearden Metal? I’ve got a bridge I need to build…
July 1, 2009 @ 5:38 PM
Schiff , at one time,
Schiff , at one time, recommended people get HELOC’s and put the money in Euro stocks. Ouch. Talk about worse than bad advice. Decoupling in a global economy is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard.
I think Ayn is going to be on target here as the govt will have to raise taxes a lot in the near future. The bond market will start to rise and they’ll need to get their money from the few of us left working.
July 1, 2009 @ 6:48 PM
peterb wrote:Schiff , at one
[quote=peterb]Schiff , at one time, recommended people get HELOC’s and put the money in Euro stocks. Ouch. Talk about worse than bad advice. Decoupling in a global economy is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard.
I think Ayn is going to be on target here as the govt will have to raise taxes a lot in the near future. The bond market will start to rise and they’ll need to get their money from the few of us left working.
[/quote]
HELOC the last drop of peak bubble value out of housing and put it somewhere else? What’s wrong with that plan? Beats not taking the value out, and losing it all as housing goes down.
July 1, 2009 @ 7:42 PM
briansd1 wrote:I know what my
[quote=briansd1]I know what my summer reading will be.
http://www.amazon.com/Goddess-Market-Rand-American-Right/dp/0195324870/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246473779&sr=8-1
Interesting that Ayn Rand’s book is still selling well still today.
http://www.hereandnow.org/stand-alone-player/?fileUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bu.edu%2Fwbur%2Fstorage%2F2009%2F07%2Fhereandnow_0701_2.mp3&fileTitle=Ayn%20Rand%20&%20Economic%20Collapse
Personally, I pretty agree with Ayn Rand, but, like Jennifer Burns suggests, there’s a lot missing to her philosophy.
[/quote]
Her greatest acolyte was Greenspan.
Enough said
July 1, 2009 @ 8:07 PM
Increasing debt on ones home
Increasing debt on ones home for an investment in securities is incredibly risky action. He would have looked a lot better had he said to just keep the cash in case of melt-down and home devalutation.
Decoupling, very weak and highly inaccurate analysis!
July 1, 2009 @ 8:57 PM
Why isn’t it much better to
Why isn’t it much better to extract market value from the home as real money, to be invested elsewhere?
People who made out like bandits during the bubble were those who borrowed the most to buy early on, and then extracted the most cash near the peak.
Let’s suppose two people own identical homes, both worth $400,000, with loans of $300,000. During a bubble, both homes attain a market value of $1,000,000, and crazy loans up to 100% of the market value become available. Person A does nothing. Person B HELOCs out $700,000. Five years later, the homes are worth $400,000 again. Person A owns a home with equity of $100,000. Person B is in foreclosure, and has no home equity, and has invested $700,000.
Person B is 10 steps ahead of Person A, as far as I can see.
July 1, 2009 @ 9:37 PM
and then follow the rest of
and then follow the rest of Schiff’s advice and lose your borrowed money on a theory that went horribly wrong. What peterb is referring to about Schiff’s decoupling theory is Schiff’s belief and investment strategy that euro/asian and emerging markets will not be hurt by a downturn in the U.S., it turns out he was very wrong.
BTW Schiff may run for senator of conneticut vs chris dodd, that should be fun to watch.
July 1, 2009 @ 9:43 PM
Dodd has been involved in
Dodd has been involved in some interesting real estate transactions. That should be good viewing for those of us who enjoy political intrigue.
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/06/13/corruptocrat-chris-dodd-caught-lying-again/
July 1, 2009 @ 11:39 PM
I wouldn’t recommend losing
I wouldn’t recommend losing money in the stock or other markets, but if you get an extra $500,000 to invest because of HELOCing to the max, you’d have an extra $250,000 even after losing 50% in the market.
I don’t pay attention to Schiff’s stock investment advice, so maybe he recommended some strategy that would have lost you 90% of extracted HELOC value, but I’m assuming he wasn’t that far wrong.
July 1, 2009 @ 8:51 PM
patb wrote:
Her greatest
[quote=patb]
Her greatest acolyte was Greenspan.
Enough said[/quote]
Ayn Rand was right, people acted for their own selfish enrichment.
Greenspan trusted that the institutions would have controls in place to assure their collective preservation. That was wrong.
Just like Ayn Rand predicted, people threw collective institutional self-preservation out the window and worked to enrich themselves leaving all of us to hold the bag. That’s why Communism in Russia didn’t work.