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A black swan is by definition something you haven't seen before and can't predict. A massive terrorist attack is a light grey swan. Everyone is expecting it sooner or later. You listed a some predictable, pedestrian, run of the mill risks, but you can't list real black swans or they wouldn't...

You cherrypicked the wrong time period. :) HSGFX since inception: 11.95% annualized S&P 500 same time period: 1.80% annualized While there's nothing to say that one time period is a better judge of a money manager's skills than another, it's worth pointing out that the fund's stated...

dddooo, you're not even trying to have a reasonable discussion here. Let me point out a few of the B.S. tactics you're using: "Unfavorable impression" is a LOOOONG way from "hating our guts" yet you use them as synonyms. You must have noticed that Spain has a 23% favorable rating, do they...

Of course they have!! I couldn't agree more. Do you see me holding hands with King Saud? Apologizing for Khomeini? Please. All I'm saying is that the worst leaders in the world come to power by grasping at legitimate grievances. Who is to blame? First, these terrible leaders. Second, the...

30% favorable?!? Dude, that's love at first sight. Even the friggin' Canadians probably don't have a 30% favorable opinion of the US! I hate to break it to you but that list only has US allies on it. You find some numbers for Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, then tell me that 30% favorable is...

Jordan and Egypt don't hate us at all. I've travelled extensively in Egypt, talked with many Egyptians, stayed in their homes, and felt nothing but welcome. Jordan is even more friendly to Americans from what I've heard. These are not quite as good examples as Turkey because they are not as...

<i>Because that's part of their mentality to blame the US, Israel, the Western World, the Crusaders... If we did not exist they would have to invent us as their lives, their societies suck and they need someone to blame.</i> Let's test your theory. Suppose there is a country full of Muslims...

My point is that the Iranian revolution was not something that an American president can just stop in its tracks. You think Khomeini would have just evaporated into thin air when Reagan took the oath of office? At worst, Carter failed to delay it for a year or two. Martin

The question at hand is why we are stuck with a virulently anti-US theocracy in Iran. While you may not personally care much what Iranians think about us, you have to admit that the opinions of the Iranian public is an important factor in the type of government they end up with. You don't have...

AAA, do you know, or have you ever talked with, any actual Iranians? I do, and I have. You are deeply underestimating the depth of Iranian resentment over our interference, yes even way back in the early 50s. Americans may have forgotten Mossadegh, but Iranians have not. In your world...

Blaming modern Iran on Carter is absurd. The damage was done long before that, when the British and the Eisenhower administration conspired to oust the democratically elected, secular, and highly popular Prime Minister Mossadegh. That created the political and ideological vacuum in Iran that was...

I don't see how Kerry or Gore have anything to do with this thread. I don't expect a true conservative to vote for either of those guys. I voted for Gore and Kerry, but I can't blame anyone for following their ideals and refusing to vote for someone they disagree with. Where I do blame...

5) you pay taxes on trading gains from friend/family account

While I'm short CFC, and have been since May 2006, I think they're going to be a really good buy at some point. Once all the bad news and writedowns and earnings adjustments play out, I'm looking for a price in the low 20s. I don't think CFC is going bankrupt. In a year or two, with almost...

Interesting blog. However, I think his conclusions are seriously flawed. He observes two correlations: a negative correlation between appreciation and mortgage delinquency, and a positive correlation between unemployment and mortgage delinquency. The thing is, these correlations should...

Wrong. Raid 0 is a big win for small files as well. With N drives you get a speedup of approximately N with seek dominated workloads, unless your I/O is single threaded. Martin

I own a Steelcase Leap and I spent 5 years with an Aeron. In my opinion the Leap is a much better chair. The Aeron has a few problems. Back support is always going to be problematic because of the way the chair is built, they keep retrofitting doodads to try to work around the problem but...

Alan Greenspan? http://www.slate.com/id/2096313/ Martin

No, you get paid interest on your short position - but only if you have more than $100k proceeds from short sales. You may get charged borrowing fees for hard-to-borrow stocks. This is something IB doesn't talk about much and doesn't break out as a separate line item, it's just an invisible...

Has anyone looked into Vertica? A column major database from Michael Stonebraker's latest academic spinoff. www.vertica.com I signed up for their early access program but haven't heard boo. It looks a little too heavily read-optimized for my needs but still, pretty darn cool. nitro still...