Reality-Based Engineering: 2008/12

I hate verison links

Just because...(A, B, C) or just google "verizon dsl customer service".

Getting Your "Cheap" On

Wifey and I were watching the early news, bleary-eyed, at 5 AM a few weeks ago and they were talking about bargain hunting the morning of cyber Monday (the Monday after the post-Thanksgiving Black Friday shopping extravaganza) and they interviewed the creator of this website, cheapcheapcheap.com. I've been following it, and they've had some great deals on things for christmas and not for christmas, blog-style on the front page with forums.

Now, Yahoo has a few articles up on the phenomenon of using coupon codes at your favorite retailers, whether they be internet-only or have a brick&mortar presence as well. Mentioned are: RetailMeNot.com, FatWallet.com and the Budget Fashionista.

Labels: economy, effluvia, free stuff, shopping, yahoo

Supernovas Are Cool

This composite image provided by NASA Wednesday Dec. 3, 2008 of the Tycho supernova remnant combines infrared and X-ray observations obtained with NASA's Spitzer and Chandra space observatories, respectively, and the Calar Alto observatory, in Spain. The image shows the remnant of a supernova that was observed in 1572 by Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe. The explosion has left a blazing hot cloud of expanding debris (green and yellow). The location of the blast's outer shock wave can be seen as a blue sphere of ultra-energetic electrons. Newly synthesized dust in the ejected material and heated pre-existing dust from the area around the supernova radiate at infrared wavelengths of 24 microns (red). Foreground and background stars in the image are white.

Labels: effluvia, energy, science, space

Forcibly Reducing Mortgage Rates Lower?

According to WaPo, Paulson is looking into this. Seems okay on the surface, but really would only seem to help people that can re-fi, but Treasury talks about it in terms of trying to spur new buying. But, Big Picture hits the nail on the head on a core issue we've had for some time in housing (something that people that have owned homes for 20+ years cannot seem to understand):

There are two problems with Housing:

Ultra low rates and an abdication of lending standards put 3 - 4 million people in homes they could not afford. The real costs of home ownership have been forcing many of these people to move back into more affordable quarters (i.e., rentals).
By just about every measure, home prices remain significantly elevated over historic metrics.And given the chain of sales that accompanies any existing home sale — the starter home/move up home/bigger house/even nice home/downsize retiree — anything that keeps home prices out of reach of the starter and move up buyers damages the entire chain fo purchasers.

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Emphasis mine. New homeowners have been priced out of the first time home market under older lending [20% down]/ saving / spending [no more than 25-33% of income on mortgage] habits, and have had to adapt. Moving to the ex-urbs, lots of PMIs, >50% of income spent on mortgage are all habits that most of my friends and contemporaries have had to choose to buy into their first home. This mortgage / credit crisis disproportionately hits the 1st time homeowners that have bought in the past 5 or so years. Not that buying your 1st home in say 1999 was a piece of cake either.

Oh, and bonddad says things suck right now. Indeed.

Labels: Bonddad, economy, housing, The Big Picture, WaPo