Maybe you've got more friends

You must have a lot more friends than I do if you can afford to toss them aside because of their politics. My life has a lot of diversity and includes people I don't agree with on politics, religion, fashion, culture, sports teams, abortion, euthanasia, pets, etc. Politics has replaced religion as the big divide. I support your decision to campaign, to be a poll watcher/attendant, to write letters to the editor, to fund raise, to go on marches carrying signs I disagree with. But, if you're so narrowly focused in your relationships that no one is allowed near you who isn't a Democrat or a Socialist, what's the point? Are you afraid of a new idea? Do you think you'll change minds with tantrums? You've never watched Glenn Beck or Fox News, you wouldn't dream of reading the opinion columns of the Wall Street Journal, or trying to understand a market economy, but you certainly have opinions about them. Conservatives can't avoid an alternative viewpoint--it's everywhere. But you guys live in a bubble residing inside a cloud, and you seem to sense that it's a very fragile universe in there so no light, air or heat is allowed.

Advice for boomer retirees

Readers jumped all over those whiners that the WSJ wrote about on April 1. I blogged about them, too. Usually, in letters-to-the editor the WSJ tries to offer a cross section, but I guess no one feels too sorry for a 57 year who had a 6 figure salary and can't retire early at their accustomed standard of living because the economy burps. Here's a summary of comments in yesterday's paper

Save

Live modestly

Learn to understand risk

Learn from past bubbles, whether it's technology or real estate

Take responsibility for your own actions

Locate that document that guarantees you will never experience problems [that was my personal favorite]

Use a little hindsight--like what was your property worth 2 years ago compared to 5 years ago

Not a single sympathizer in the boatload.

Greenspan bursts some bubbles

Demand driven by expection I think is a fancy phrase for greed

"I do not doubt that a low U.S. federal-funds rate in response to the dot-com crash, and especially the 1% rate set in mid-2003 to counter potential deflation, lowered interest rates on adjustable-rate mortgages and may have contributed to the rise in U.S. home prices. In my judgment, however, the impact on demand for homes financed with ARMs was not major.

Demand in those days was driven by the expectation of rising prices--the dynamic that fuels most asset-price bubbles. If low adjustable-rate financing had not been available, most of the demand would have been financed with fixed rate, long-term mortgages. In fact, home prices continued to rise for two years subsequent to the peak of ARM originations (seasonally adjusted)." in Today's Wall Street Journal