percentage wise, than me or anyone that is facebook friends with me.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/49122140
no wonder he wants to lower taxes. he'd probably save himself another million dollars.
if i were him, i'd probably sure as hell want to lower taxes too.
and the romney's had a tax extension for the year of 2011 until now, so he paid taxes 5 months after most of the people in the country. umm, cool.
but as wikipedia says, the top 1% of americans still pay 37% of all the country's taxes.
is that fair?
whatever, i'm going to carl's jr for dinner.
Friday, September 21, 2012
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
"Short people got no reason, to live" - another FML...
tall people are more successful, more confident, better performers, and make more money than short people.
that is a fact: http://faculty.washington.edu/mdj3/MGMT580/Readings/Week%201/Judge.pdf
brb as i go dig a hole and die in it and then cover the hole up so i don't leave a mess for anyone else.
short people got no reason to live is a song by randy newman:
that is a fact: http://faculty.washington.edu/mdj3/MGMT580/Readings/Week%201/Judge.pdf
brb as i go dig a hole and die in it and then cover the hole up so i don't leave a mess for anyone else.
short people got no reason to live is a song by randy newman:
Sunday, September 9, 2012
the french call it l'esprit de l'escalier
the germans call it treppenwitz
it means thinking up of a clever comeback shortly after the moment has passed.
like after you got shut down and you were left speechless, then as you're walking down the staircase towards the exit or as you're driving home reminiscing about the night, you come up with the perfect comment you should have responded with. but the moment has passed.
the bigger problem is avoir l'esprit de l'escalier. The "avoir" makes it like an infirmity you posses. it means time and time again, you only come up with that repartee as you're walking down the stairs towards the exit. you're always a few minutes too late.
i'll do all i can to prevent this from becoming the story of my life.
i'll write all my lines the night before if i have to.
it means thinking up of a clever comeback shortly after the moment has passed.
like after you got shut down and you were left speechless, then as you're walking down the staircase towards the exit or as you're driving home reminiscing about the night, you come up with the perfect comment you should have responded with. but the moment has passed.
the bigger problem is avoir l'esprit de l'escalier. The "avoir" makes it like an infirmity you posses. it means time and time again, you only come up with that repartee as you're walking down the stairs towards the exit. you're always a few minutes too late.
i'll do all i can to prevent this from becoming the story of my life.
i'll write all my lines the night before if i have to.
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
things i heard from the democratic national convention that i liked
-the way you run a business and make it grow is you invest in R&D
-a country is a lot like a business and its R&D is its education, infrastructure, broadband internet, healthcare system, etc.
-Romney wants to cut all of those things, while the BRICS, and even Europe are investing more than us in those areas
-what the veteran said about how republicans are eager to send people to war, but stingy about helping out the veterans
what clinton said
-the republicans' plan just doesn't make sense. it defies arithmetic
-how can republicans promise they'll cut the debt when they want to cut more taxes but increase defense spending?
-that causes crazy cuts in everything else (infrastructure, education, social welfare, etc.)
-romney didn't defend his policies in his speech
-obamacare forced health insurance companies to put 85% of their spending to actually providing health to the people they claim to be insuring, instead of spending on higher paychecks and more advertising.
(i realize squeezing health insurance companies will cause a lot of people in those industries to lose jobs. but maybe it has to get a little worse before it gets better? because if those health insurance companies get what they want, yes the thousands of people those health insurance companies employ will get to keep their jobs, but millions of others will get screwed - financially and bodily)
-Eisenhower, a republican, and a general at that, built up America's infrastructure
what some commentator on pbs said
-12 years before clinton went to president, republicans tripled the debt.
-clinton balanced the debt
-george w bush doubled the debt
if i got some of these facts wrong, who cares. i'm pretty set on who i'm voting for.
the DNC was for the most part logical and made sense.
i didn't listen to the RNC as much, but the main things i heard out of it was to choose respect not love, which confused the hell out of me, and their bashing of the "you didn't build that" quote they took out of context.
as long as obama doesn't become this guy
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2200802/Embattled-Hollande-defends-75-tax-rate-disillusioned-France.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
but to keep things in perspective, the top 1% of americans do pay 40% of all of the US's taxes. that doesn't seem so fair either, does it? if you busted your butt to become the 1%, you wouldn't to pay all that tax either... http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2011/09/26/why-the-rich-pay-40-of-taxes/
-a country is a lot like a business and its R&D is its education, infrastructure, broadband internet, healthcare system, etc.
-Romney wants to cut all of those things, while the BRICS, and even Europe are investing more than us in those areas
-what the veteran said about how republicans are eager to send people to war, but stingy about helping out the veterans
what clinton said
-the republicans' plan just doesn't make sense. it defies arithmetic
-how can republicans promise they'll cut the debt when they want to cut more taxes but increase defense spending?
-that causes crazy cuts in everything else (infrastructure, education, social welfare, etc.)
-romney didn't defend his policies in his speech
-obamacare forced health insurance companies to put 85% of their spending to actually providing health to the people they claim to be insuring, instead of spending on higher paychecks and more advertising.
(i realize squeezing health insurance companies will cause a lot of people in those industries to lose jobs. but maybe it has to get a little worse before it gets better? because if those health insurance companies get what they want, yes the thousands of people those health insurance companies employ will get to keep their jobs, but millions of others will get screwed - financially and bodily)
-Eisenhower, a republican, and a general at that, built up America's infrastructure
what some commentator on pbs said
-12 years before clinton went to president, republicans tripled the debt.
-clinton balanced the debt
-george w bush doubled the debt
if i got some of these facts wrong, who cares. i'm pretty set on who i'm voting for.
the DNC was for the most part logical and made sense.
i didn't listen to the RNC as much, but the main things i heard out of it was to choose respect not love, which confused the hell out of me, and their bashing of the "you didn't build that" quote they took out of context.
as long as obama doesn't become this guy
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2200802/Embattled-Hollande-defends-75-tax-rate-disillusioned-France.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
but to keep things in perspective, the top 1% of americans do pay 40% of all of the US's taxes. that doesn't seem so fair either, does it? if you busted your butt to become the 1%, you wouldn't to pay all that tax either... http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2011/09/26/why-the-rich-pay-40-of-taxes/
Goldman-fucking-Sachs Caused Everything
Goldman Sachs caused the 2008 financial crises:
http://money.cnn.com/2011/04/13/news/economy/goldman_sachs_senate_report/index.htm
Goldman Sachs benefits from the financial crises:
http://business.time.com/2009/07/14/goldman-sachs-has-had-an-excellent-financial-crisis/
Goldman Sachs screwed Greece and the EU:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-06/goldman-secret-greece-loan-shows-two-sinners-as-client-unravels.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07-hA9DW-Po&
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kevin-connor/goldmans-role-in-greek-cr_b_479511.html
Greeks are actually not bad people:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/17/richard-parker-greece_n_1524951.html
Goldman Sachs screws Oakland:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/48413748/Oakland_Leaders_Enter_Battle_With_Goldman_Sachs
Goldman Sachs caused the great depression:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/130981-we-ve-been-here-before-goldman-sachs-1929-2009
Goldman Sachs helped cause every financial crisis since the great depression:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-american-bubble-machine-20100405
In one case, Goldman allegedly gave a multimillion-dollar special offering to eBay CEO Meg Whitman, who later joined Goldman's board, in exchange for future i-banking business
One of the truly comic moments in the history of America's recent financial collapse came when Gov. Jon Corzine of New Jersey, who ran Goldman from 1994 to 1999 and left with $320 million in IPO-fattened stock, insisted in 2002 that "I've never even heard the term 'laddering' before."
For a bank that paid out $7 billion a year in salaries, $110 million fines issued half a decade late were something far less than a deterrent —they were a joke.
For decades mortgage dealers insisted that home buyers be able to produce a down payment of 10 percent or more, show a steady income and good credit rating, and possess a real first and last name. Then, at the dawn of the new millennium, they suddenly threw all that shit out the window and started writing mortgages on the backs of napkins to cocktail waitresses and ex-cons carrying five bucks and a Snickers bar.
Take one $494 million issue that year, GSAMP Trust 2006S3. Many of the mortgages belonged to second-mortgage borrowers, and the average equity they had in their homes was 0.71 percent. Moreover, 58 percent of the loans included little or no documentation — no names of the borrowers, no addresses of the homes, just zip codes. Yet both of the major ratings agencies, Moody's and Standard & Poor's, rated 93 percent of the issue as investment grade. Moody's projected that less than 10 percent of the loans would default. In reality, 18 percent of the mortgages were in default within 18 months.
I ask the manager how it could be that selling something to customers that you're actually betting against — particularly when you know more about the weaknesses of those products than the customer — doesn't amount to securities fraud.
In fact, at least $13 billion of the taxpayer money given to AIG in the bailout ultimately went to Goldman, meaning that the bank made out on the housing bubble twice: It fucked the investors who bought their horseshit CDOs by betting against its own crappy product, then it turned around and fucked the taxpayer by making him pay off those same bets.
Soaring food prices driven by the commodities bubble led to catastrophes across the planet, forcing an estimated 100 million people into hunger and sparking food riots throughout the Third World.
It began in September of last year, when then-Treasury secretary Paulson made a momentous series of decisions. Although he had already engineered a rescue of Bear Stearns a few months before and helped bail out quasi-private lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Paulson elected to let Lehman Brothers — one of Goldman's last real competitors — collapse without intervention. ("Goldman's superhero status was left intact," says market analyst Eric Salzman, "and an investment banking competitor, Lehman, goes away.") The very next day, Paulson green-lighted a massive, $85 billion bailout of AIG, which promptly turned around and repaid $13 billion it owed to Goldman. Thanks to the rescue effort, the bank ended up getting paid in full for its bad bets: By contrast, retired auto workers awaiting the Chrysler bailout will be lucky to receive 50 cents for every dollar they are owed.
And here's the real punch line. After playing an intimate role in four historic bubble catastrophes, after helping $5 trillion in wealth disappear from the NASDAQ, after pawning off thousands of toxic mortgages on pensioners and cities, after helping to drive the price of gas up to $4 a gallon and to push 100 million people around the world into hunger, after securing tens of billions of taxpayer dollars through a series of bailouts overseen by its former CEO, what did Goldman Sachs give back to the people of the United States in 2008?
Fourteen million dollars.
That is what the firm paid in taxes in 2008, an effective tax rate of exactly one, read it, one percent. The bank paid out $10 billion in compensation and benefits that same year and made a profit of more than $2 billion — yet it paid the Treasury less than a third of what it forked over to CEO Lloyd Blankfein, who made $42.9 million last year.
This should be a pitchfork-level outrage — but somehow, when Goldman released its post-bailout tax profile, hardly anyone said a word. One of the few to remark on the obscenity was Rep. Lloyd Doggett, a Democrat from Texas who serves on the House Ways and Means Committee. "With the right hand out begging for bailout money," he said, "the left is hiding it offshore."
“Henry Paulson was Secretary of the Treasury under George W Bush. Before that he was board Chairman of the Board and CEO of Goldman Sachs”
“Robert Rubin was Secretary of the Treasury under Clinton. Before that he was cochair of Goldman Sachs.”
“Larry Summers, another Secretary of the Treasury under Clinton, was a consultant to Goldman Sachs”
“Former Treasury Secretaries Henry Paulson, Robert Rubin, and Larry Summers all came from Goldman, and current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner rose through the ranks of government as a Summers/Rubin protégé. One commentator called the U.S. Treasury “Goldman Sachs South.””
Counter-argument article: http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2009/08/07/matt-taibbi-is-just-plain-wrong-about-goldman-sachs/
Update Aug 2013:
Apparently, Goldman Sachs alumni are basically in every central bank: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-07-01/goldman-takeover-complete-glimpse-inside-bank-england-where-mark-carney-now-presidin
wtf...
Goldman fucking Sachs
http://money.cnn.com/2011/04/13/news/economy/goldman_sachs_senate_report/index.htm
Goldman Sachs benefits from the financial crises:
http://business.time.com/2009/07/14/goldman-sachs-has-had-an-excellent-financial-crisis/
Goldman Sachs screwed Greece and the EU:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-06/goldman-secret-greece-loan-shows-two-sinners-as-client-unravels.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07-hA9DW-Po&
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kevin-connor/goldmans-role-in-greek-cr_b_479511.html
Greeks are actually not bad people:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/17/richard-parker-greece_n_1524951.html
Goldman Sachs screws Oakland:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/48413748/Oakland_Leaders_Enter_Battle_With_Goldman_Sachs
Goldman Sachs caused the great depression:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/130981-we-ve-been-here-before-goldman-sachs-1929-2009
Goldman Sachs helped cause every financial crisis since the great depression:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-american-bubble-machine-20100405
In one case, Goldman allegedly gave a multimillion-dollar special offering to eBay CEO Meg Whitman, who later joined Goldman's board, in exchange for future i-banking business
One of the truly comic moments in the history of America's recent financial collapse came when Gov. Jon Corzine of New Jersey, who ran Goldman from 1994 to 1999 and left with $320 million in IPO-fattened stock, insisted in 2002 that "I've never even heard the term 'laddering' before."
For a bank that paid out $7 billion a year in salaries, $110 million fines issued half a decade late were something far less than a deterrent —they were a joke.
For decades mortgage dealers insisted that home buyers be able to produce a down payment of 10 percent or more, show a steady income and good credit rating, and possess a real first and last name. Then, at the dawn of the new millennium, they suddenly threw all that shit out the window and started writing mortgages on the backs of napkins to cocktail waitresses and ex-cons carrying five bucks and a Snickers bar.
Take one $494 million issue that year, GSAMP Trust 2006S3. Many of the mortgages belonged to second-mortgage borrowers, and the average equity they had in their homes was 0.71 percent. Moreover, 58 percent of the loans included little or no documentation — no names of the borrowers, no addresses of the homes, just zip codes. Yet both of the major ratings agencies, Moody's and Standard & Poor's, rated 93 percent of the issue as investment grade. Moody's projected that less than 10 percent of the loans would default. In reality, 18 percent of the mortgages were in default within 18 months.
I ask the manager how it could be that selling something to customers that you're actually betting against — particularly when you know more about the weaknesses of those products than the customer — doesn't amount to securities fraud.
"It's exactly securities fraud," he says. "It's the heart of securities fraud."
In fact, at least $13 billion of the taxpayer money given to AIG in the bailout ultimately went to Goldman, meaning that the bank made out on the housing bubble twice: It fucked the investors who bought their horseshit CDOs by betting against its own crappy product, then it turned around and fucked the taxpayer by making him pay off those same bets.
Soaring food prices driven by the commodities bubble led to catastrophes across the planet, forcing an estimated 100 million people into hunger and sparking food riots throughout the Third World.
It began in September of last year, when then-Treasury secretary Paulson made a momentous series of decisions. Although he had already engineered a rescue of Bear Stearns a few months before and helped bail out quasi-private lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Paulson elected to let Lehman Brothers — one of Goldman's last real competitors — collapse without intervention. ("Goldman's superhero status was left intact," says market analyst Eric Salzman, "and an investment banking competitor, Lehman, goes away.") The very next day, Paulson green-lighted a massive, $85 billion bailout of AIG, which promptly turned around and repaid $13 billion it owed to Goldman. Thanks to the rescue effort, the bank ended up getting paid in full for its bad bets: By contrast, retired auto workers awaiting the Chrysler bailout will be lucky to receive 50 cents for every dollar they are owed.
And here's the real punch line. After playing an intimate role in four historic bubble catastrophes, after helping $5 trillion in wealth disappear from the NASDAQ, after pawning off thousands of toxic mortgages on pensioners and cities, after helping to drive the price of gas up to $4 a gallon and to push 100 million people around the world into hunger, after securing tens of billions of taxpayer dollars through a series of bailouts overseen by its former CEO, what did Goldman Sachs give back to the people of the United States in 2008?
Fourteen million dollars.
That is what the firm paid in taxes in 2008, an effective tax rate of exactly one, read it, one percent. The bank paid out $10 billion in compensation and benefits that same year and made a profit of more than $2 billion — yet it paid the Treasury less than a third of what it forked over to CEO Lloyd Blankfein, who made $42.9 million last year.
This should be a pitchfork-level outrage — but somehow, when Goldman released its post-bailout tax profile, hardly anyone said a word. One of the few to remark on the obscenity was Rep. Lloyd Doggett, a Democrat from Texas who serves on the House Ways and Means Committee. "With the right hand out begging for bailout money," he said, "the left is hiding it offshore."
“Henry Paulson was Secretary of the Treasury under George W Bush. Before that he was board Chairman of the Board and CEO of Goldman Sachs”
“Robert Rubin was Secretary of the Treasury under Clinton. Before that he was cochair of Goldman Sachs.”
“Larry Summers, another Secretary of the Treasury under Clinton, was a consultant to Goldman Sachs”
“Former Treasury Secretaries Henry Paulson, Robert Rubin, and Larry Summers all came from Goldman, and current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner rose through the ranks of government as a Summers/Rubin protégé. One commentator called the U.S. Treasury “Goldman Sachs South.””
Counter-argument article: http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2009/08/07/matt-taibbi-is-just-plain-wrong-about-goldman-sachs/
Update Aug 2013:
Apparently, Goldman Sachs alumni are basically in every central bank: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-07-01/goldman-takeover-complete-glimpse-inside-bank-england-where-mark-carney-now-presidin
wtf...
Goldman fucking Sachs
2.4ghz wireless mouse doesn't work near USB 3.0 port
if your laptop has USB ports next to each other,
and one of them is USB 3.0,
and the other has a wireless mouse's receiver in it that's 2.4ghz,
then the wireless mouse might not work when the usb 3.0 port is used (like when hooked up to an external hard drive).
read here to understand why: http://www.usb.org/developers/whitepapers/327216.pdf
this happened to me. on my new computer. sucks.
i recently bought a new laptop, a samsung np700z3c. i describe why i bought it here.
it's a beautiful machine, a great reason why apple would want to sue samsung, and it's only 2/3rds the price of a mac book pro. it looks good on the outside and is fast on the inside.
but it has one major flaw - it has 2 usb ports right next to each other, and that usb 3.0 port on the left causes a 2.4ghz radio frequency interference on the wireless mouse receiver that's plugged into the port beside it, screwing over my mouse. (most wireless mouse use 2.4ghz)
samsung laptop designers should've put these usb ports on different sides of the computer.
i believe macbooks have this problem too though, as described here. hehehe, suckers.
interestingly enough, there is a company that makes 5.8ghz wireless mice
and one of them is USB 3.0,
and the other has a wireless mouse's receiver in it that's 2.4ghz,
then the wireless mouse might not work when the usb 3.0 port is used (like when hooked up to an external hard drive).
read here to understand why: http://www.usb.org/developers/whitepapers/327216.pdf
this happened to me. on my new computer. sucks.
i recently bought a new laptop, a samsung np700z3c. i describe why i bought it here.
it's a beautiful machine, a great reason why apple would want to sue samsung, and it's only 2/3rds the price of a mac book pro. it looks good on the outside and is fast on the inside.
but it has one major flaw - it has 2 usb ports right next to each other, and that usb 3.0 port on the left causes a 2.4ghz radio frequency interference on the wireless mouse receiver that's plugged into the port beside it, screwing over my mouse. (most wireless mouse use 2.4ghz)
samsung laptop designers should've put these usb ports on different sides of the computer.
i believe macbooks have this problem too though, as described here. hehehe, suckers.
interestingly enough, there is a company that makes 5.8ghz wireless mice
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