Phantasmix

USA, 1981

Population - 229,466,000
Unemployment rate - 7.6%
Total unemployed - 17,439,416

USA, 2008

Population - 301,139,947 (July 2007 est.)
Unemployment rate - 6.1%
Total unemployed - 18,369,536

Lower unemployment rate, but more people actually unemployed.

I genuinely don’t like Google (GOOG: 444.25 -1.33%), and belive that the fact that they hide under the “do no evil” slogan cover, makes them worse than Bill Gates (he, at least, doesn’t pretend).

Anyway, for those of you who jumped on the Chrome browser wagon, be aware that Chrome’s Terms of Service contain a rights grab:

“…by posting anything (via Chrome) to your blog(s), any forum, video site, myspace, itunes, or any other site that might happen to be supporting you, Google can use your work without paying you a dime.”

“And for the record, Microsoft tried this years ago with MSN messenger, where MS got an irrevocable perpetual license to all IP that passed through MSN messenger, and the net basically revolted.”

“There are some people who have claimed that this is standard legal jargon for every piece of software. Not only is that simply not true, no clause even close to that is in the Firefox terms of service.”

This is an explanation in layman’s terms, more info here, including the relevant paragraphs from Chrome’s TOS.

Latest trade updates are now posted on a separate page.

E.M. Forster, “The Machine Stops”
The story was written in 1909. Required reading for the Internet age.

I’m testing Twitter on my site. It seems like a slightly faster way to post the trade updates than the Portfolio page on the blog.

So I will update the Portfolio page at the end of the day, and will post my trades in real time via Twitter (it’s at the top right of the pages).

• Dividends: Myths and Realities
  The rules of the game have changed. Find out what works—and doesn’t.
• 50 Ways to Lose Your Money (Without Trying)
• Interesting piece from Investors Business Daily about Barack Obama.
  Must read especially if you like and plan to vote for him.
• …. free full scans of magazines. Edit: I removed the link, don’t want to be a party to this copyright infringement as it’s been confirmed that these are not authorized copies of the mags.

Last night I had a nightmare: the banks sent out notices for everyone to pony up the balance of the mortgage. (I swear, I’m not making it up, I even woke up an hour early from worry.)

Apparently, the banks can really do it and in fact they had done it in the 80’s, though selectively. I never read that fine print of our mortgage, but I hear that this clause is there.

Anyway, so this happens, and obviously most people can’t pay what they owe, so they start listing their properties for sale and there’s a glut of properties and prices are dropping. How many people can really pay for real estate in cash? Very few. So the prices are dropping, and it’s pretty much impossible to sell the place and pay the bank so the only thing we can do is leave.

That scared the hell out of me because recently I started thinking of our condo ‘equity’ as part of our net worth. Not for lines of credit or whatever, just it’s nice to think that should we sell the place we’ll have an X amount of money in our pocket. If the above scenario plays out, the only money we’ll realistically have is the money in the bank.

It’s probably an unlikely scenario in Canada … at the moment (knock on wood), but always keep in mind that this is a fragile system, as we’re observing the U.S. real estate market.

This would be an easy way to completely decimate the middle class, by the way.

Moral of the story - having cash is nice, the more the better.

But I have another - waking - nightmare related to hoarding cash. Will tell all about it in part 2.