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Mozilo is dishonest. He knew this shit was coming down the pike, he was selling shares like mad, but he was playing cheerleader until the end. Now he's telling it like it is, but that's probably only because he's scared of lawsuits. I don't care about his laurels, I'm not going to buy the...

Let's take a specific example. PetroChina is traded both in Hong Kong and the NYSE. By your logic, once Hong Kong closes, the price of PTR should remain constant until Hong Kong opens again, after the NYSE close. Since PTR isn't trading on its primary exchange, nobody in New York can possibly...

If you buy or sell, you are making a forecast yourself. You are predicting that China will open higher or lower (respectively) than the current ask or bid. The market price is discovered through the buying and selling pressures of many market participants. The only way you can make money is by...

You're ignoring consumer surplus. This is commonly overlooked by people who do not understand economics. Lower wages create value for employers, but lower prices create value for consumers. Competition tends to eliminate the employer surplus but does not eliminate the consumer surplus. The...

That is precisely the case. The ETF tracks the expected value of the portfolio. Even if the underlying stocks aren't trading in China, their value still fluctuates based on news, adverse events, etc. The ETF is priced based on the market consensus of what the underlying stocks are worth...

Actually I agree with pretty much everything you're saying here. I think the best outcome is to encourage ordinary immigration, i.e. people who want to become American citizens. I don't have any problem with anti-illegal-immigration policies as long as they provide an alternative. I also prefer...

I knew I was going to regret it. :) "Open border" was a poor choice of words. I don't support illegal immigration or the policy of turning a blind eye to a practice that approximates slavery. Tearing down border security but keeping all other policies the same would be a disaster -- although...

What are you talking about? The end of day NAV? Nobody cares, it's just an estimate. What matters is where those stocks open tomorrow morning. That's what the US market is trying to pin down, and that's why these ETFs are down hard. Can you be specific about how someone would make "free...

Cheap labor pertains to the first generation of Mexicans who sneak over to this country. The problem here is that their children and children's children are not going to be satisfied doing the type of work that their forefathers did. I hope not. Hopefully they will be better educated, more...

<i>1) the micro economic issue of the health care. On this issue you are correct</i> Thank you. That really was all I wanted to get across. <i>2) the macro issue, of a major political battle, of Amnesty. Citizens do not want it, plain and simple.</i> OK, against my better judgement...

Many illegal immigrants and other uninsured people go to emergency rooms for routine care, or for routine conditions that have gotten to an acute stage. Many of these problems are far less expensive to treat proactively, with appointments, normal business hours, staff physicians or physician...

Good, so you agree that we have to provide emergency life saving care to everyone. I just wanted to make sure we're on the same page there. Then all I'm saying is that ALSO providing very basic, free public health services is likely to actually SAVE money overall. The net cost of very basic...

OK, all they are <i>entitled</i> to is humane deportation. Strictly speaking, I agree. But, in the real world, absolute attitudes like yours just don't work. Not because they are wrong, but because they are impractical. Let's say you're in charge of US health care policy. Your policy is no...

Thanks for the clarification. First of all, I did write: "I'm not saying free health care for illegal immigrants, or single payer health care for that matter, are necessarily good solutions. This is a hard problem and any approach has moral hazards and creates incentives for wasteful...

OK, so please explain to me, where do you actually disagree with what I actually wrote? Martin

I agree, and this is a big problem, because emergency rooms an incredibly inefficient way to provide medical care. One of the big advantages of national health care systems is that they can emphasize preventative and maintenance care (which is cheap) over acute care (which is expensive). It's...

If you want to fix the problem of meritless lawsuits, be my guest. My concern with this legislation is that it has nothing to do with merit, and everything to do with our petty fears, petty fears which have an undeniable racial overtone. That is exactly the environment where laws get passed...

If the lawsuits are in fact meritless, then they get thrown out of court. You still get a jury of your peers, and in America that means a jury that's mostly not going to be brown and mostly going to be scared shitless. Do we really need legislation to ward off that sort of lawsuit? I think not...

In fact it was. Can you post a link? Martin

"Crazy risks"??? What, you mean the one in 100,000 chance I'm going to die from terrorism this year? It doesn't take much in the way of stones to look a risk like that in the eye and refuse to be terrorized. Learn some statistics. Eating the wrong food group kills more Americans in a day than...