My useful and useless facts thread

NEW -> Contingent Buyer Assistance Program
<p>This is too much for me to take.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/magazine/18wwln-medium-t.html">www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/magazine/18wwln-medium-t.html</a></p>

<p><strong>"Sunny days!</strong> The earliest episodes of “Sesame Street” are available on digital video! Break out some Keebler products, fire up the DVD player and prepare for the exquisite pleasure-pain of top-shelf nostalgia.</p>

<p>Just don’t bring the children. According to an earnest warning on Volumes 1 and 2, “Sesame Street: Old School” is adults-only: “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.” </p>

<p>Say what? At a recent all-ages home screening, a hush fell over the room. “What did they do to us?” asked one Gen-X mother of two, finally. The show rolled, and the sweet trauma came flooding back. What they did to us was hard-core. Man, was that scene rough. The masonry on the dingy brownstone at 123 Sesame Street, where the closeted Ernie and Bert shared a dismal basement apartment, was deteriorating. Cookie Monster was on a fast track to diabetes. Oscar’s depression was untreated. Prozacky Elmo didn’t exist."</p>

<p> </p>
 
<p>I just love the Amsterdam useless fact and have spread it around to several people.</p>

<p>You say housing will reflate in a year or 2? How about 271 years to get back to square one. My son especially liked this useless fact.</p>
 
Not for the squeamish.... <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/11/21/hairball.case/index.html">Doctors untangle the strange case of the giant hairball - CNN.com</a>
 
<p>Credit Crunch cereal</p>

<p><a href="http://interestrateroundup.blogspot.com/2007/11/little-gallows-humor-for-holidays.html">http://interestrateroundup.blogspot.com/2007/11/little-gallows-humor-for-holidays.html</a></p>
 
<p>Such a 180 degree viewpoint from "I must have granite counters now, on 100% financing..." Is it just an age and expectations thing?</p>

<p>Barely Getting By and Facing a Cold Maine Winter </p>

<p>http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/24/us/24maine.html?em&ex=1196053200&en=b0703beb84ac1157&ei=5087%0A</p>
 
This story broke my heart. I'm going to collect up some old videos, Hershey bars and a few bucks and mail them off to Maine.
 
<p>The new series Pushing Daisies--does it signal a paradign shift??</p>

<p>The premise is silly--the hero can revive people from death, but only for one minute. If he doesn't make them die again, somebody else dies on a sort of conservation of death instead of energy law.</p>

<p>Anyway, he revives the heroine, and she lives and they sleep in twin beds, and they desperately want each other--but they cannot touch, because, if they do, she dies.</p>

<p>So, tv has rediscovered the delicious salaciousness of prolonging the agony of lust indefinitely. For the moment, it's more interesting than instant gratification. She wears very updated 50s clothes. Sort of like the clothes I wore, if the designer really didn't understand them very well. Or was doing a fashion riff on them.</p>

<p>An outlier of a return to a Victorian consciousness?</p>

<p>I really like the show, but I can fully understand why others would hate it.</p>
 
The WGA strike out here is shutting down their production... <a href="http://community.tvguide.com/blog-entry/TVGuide-Editors-Blog/Ausiello-Report/Scoop-Daisies-Trees/800026992">Scoop! Daisies, Trees Prep Season Finales - Ausiello Report | TVGuide.com</a>
 
<p>Well, that's one way to move a slow selling house I guess. Target people who enjoy giving money away ...</p>

<p><a href="http://realestate.msn.com/Buying/Article_wsj.aspx?cp-documentid=5727646&GT1=10632">http://realestate.msn.com/Buying/Article_wsj.aspx?cp-documentid=5727646&GT1=10632</a></p>
 
<p>Get Out Of Debt (SNL skit with Steve Martin)</p>

<p><a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=cmAm8GNJ_IA">http://youtube.com/watch?v=cmAm8GNJ_IA</a></p>

<p> </p>

<p>LA Times: Shoppers taking the spree out of holiday spending</p>

<p>http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lazarus25nov25,1,300136.column?coll=la-headlines-business</p>
 
<p>The Vulture picture is great from the above post.</p>

<p><a onclick="window.open(this.href, '_blank', 'width=640,height=480,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false" href="http://www.pacificariptide.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/2007/11/24/p1010068.jpg"><img title="P1010068" height="300" alt="P1010068" width="400" border="0" src="http://www.pacificariptide.com/pacifica_riptide/images/2007/11/24/p1010068.jpg" /></a></p>

<p>Lets hear it for the Realtor with this REO.</p>

<p> </p>
 
<p>An all stated income real estate market ...</p>



Housing market, risk surge in China

Prices soar as demand fuels rampant building



<p><a href="http://www.newsobserver.com/business/story/795070.html">http://www.newsobserver.com/business/story/795070.html</a></p>

<p>Many Chinese families are already deep into speculating on property, a main driver of the surging prices that have Chinese authorities worried that a bubble might be forming. New apartments north of Shanghai's famous Bund waterfront are selling for a record $17,000 per square meter. </p>

<p>Yi Xianrong, a prominent economist at the China Academy of Social Sciences, a government think tank, is one of those sounding the alarm. </p>

<p>He contends that China's housing loans are riskier than those in the U.S., because he said most loan applicants give false information about their assets and income.</p>
 
<p>How to owe $116,000 on a house purchased for $8000</p>

<p><a href="http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071127/BIZ01/711270403">http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071127/BIZ01/711270403</a></p>

<p>About this report</p>





<p><strong>Today:</strong> Metro Detroit is a national center of the foreclosure crisis, leaving thousands of families financially ruined and depressing property values.


<strong>Wednesday:</strong> How fraud permeated the region's mortgage industry.


<strong>Thursday:</strong> What Michigan isn't doing, but other states are, to oversee lenders.</p>

>

<h5>The refinance loop</h5>

<p>Ethel Cochran is losing her home of 20 years after getting caught in a vicious cycle of adjustable-rate refinances. It's a legal -- and for lenders, highly lucrative -- process called loan flipping. Her loans:


<strong>1987:</strong> Purchased home with an $8,000 mortgage


<strong>1997:</strong> Refinanced for $20,000


<strong>1998:</strong> Refinanced for $32,000


<strong>2001:</strong> Refinanced for $68,000


<strong>2004:</strong> Refinanced for $90,000


<strong>2005:</strong> Refinanced for $104,000


<strong>2006:</strong> Refinanced for $112,000


<strong>2007:</strong> Refinanced for $116,000


<strong>2007:</strong> Home is foreclosed


<em>Sources: Ethel Cochran, ACORN</em></p>
 
My wife always sees shoes on the side of the road. It is never a pair of shoes, always a single. I never see them when I drive alone, but I do when we are together in the car.





How does a single shoe end up beside the road?
 
<p>There must be some sort of secret shoe counter cultural movement, to which we are not privy, IR.</p>

<p><img class="reflect" height="500" alt="" width="378" onload="show_notes_initially();" src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/219/453820282_a9d48a858b.jpg?v=0" /></p>
 
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