What's wrong with Hi-Point? By all accounts they are a safe and reliable gun. Ugly as sin, but so is my Glock, and I like it fine.
Because they are so cheap, they have a reputation as 'drug dealer' guns and the workmanship isn't so good. Apparently, the workmanship is better than they used to be, but still not great.
Mine was $180 OTD with a sling, mag and compensator. The gun has yet to be fired, but based on my homework prior to buying, it's an accurate gun shooting an average of 1.5 in groups @ 50 yards with 115g fmj. Perfect for a plinker. The workmanship looks good, nothing is loose etc, but she's still a virgin. The only thing that jumps out at me is the plastic trigger. Back on topic, if we were running a trade surplus, if spending was somewhat under control... heck if the dollar was fairly strong and not facing inflationary pressures/skyrocketing commodities, I'd say go for it. Start printing more money and see if stagflation or outright recession can be avoided. Since the above isn't so, we need to take our medicine and stop bailing out everyone who is having a rough go of things. The airline industry is clearly headed for a contractionary period, and I'm sure they will also be begging for bailouts. Just say no; grow a spine, DC.
Maybe we need to start electing Politicians who have a fecking clue I'm serious. . at this point . . . . they seem so removed from the reality of everyday people it is ridiculous Rocket River
I think there should be a test that potential candidates have to take to see if they are eligible to be in House or Senate
Citing moral hazard as a reason to let the financial system collapse and let millions of innocent actors take the hit is a pretty stupid way to "teach people a lesson". The logic underlying it is fallacious, first of all - from the Dutch Tulip blight to the great depression - there's very little empirical evidence that letting investments ravage financial systems is some sort of magical talismanic tonic that will cure future ills that won't resurface in some form down the way - the fact is imbalances in information and lack of it will always be the reason why there are financial markets to begin with. We can also take it the other way and drill down to the specific moral hazard here - do you think if some mortgages are not allowed to fail and a financial crisis is averted - the CDO/SIV/CMO securitization business is going to come roaring back with a vengeance? Ha...yea, right. I know a lot of now-former structured finance lawyers and trust me - they're all investigating alternative careers right now and a bailout ain't going to resurrect their nonexistent positions, the situation is even worse for bankers. Finally you are underestimating who a bailout helps and who it hurts. Do managing directors get hurt many more times over than a guy who works as a security guard for XYZbank when they have to take writedowns? SUre - but when the XYZ bank has to lay people off guess who is the first to go and has a much harder time feeding his family...and there's a multiplier effect here as well that most definitely impacts you personally. Very few sectors of the economy will remain untouched by this and most of them already have been. Have you learned a lesson yet? That's just one level of how it hurts you. What happens when a house is foreclosed? The government has to send the sheriff around to evict people, which costs time and money, and more importantly its left with an abandoned house. Abandoned houses beget other abandoned houses, which beget crime and lowers property values - that absolutely eviscerates city budgets. That's why the City of Cleveland, one of the hardest hit areas, is suing the banks and mortgage cos. for public nuisance. (probably they will lose, but it shows who gets stuck with the bill when you let things fail - people who don't have anythign to do with subprime and to whom any 'moral hazard' lesson will be lost. More on the moral hazard "lesson" - look at AIG, the world's largest insurer. Its stock has taken a nosedive due to the fact that they have had to take billions of writedowns in credit default swaps related to subprime stuff. I didn't even know what a CDS was until last year, and even now I have to look it up every few months to make sure I remember. This has hurt millions of individual investors and pensioners and 401k people (it's pretty hard to not be exposed to AIG at some point if you do any investing at all in funds). Now, you can say caveat emptor - but you're putting an incredible investigative burden on individual investors here. Not that it would have made much difference - AIG's regulatory disclosures on the credit default issue may have well been written in CHinese - they made little to no sense and they still don't and are basically impossible to decipher. So what lesson are they supposed to learn - everytime you contribute to a 401k, read every single 10-K of te S&P 500 to make sure you're not involuntarily exposed to bad CDS risks? That don't make no sense. There's some other reasons too but I feel that I've typed enough for now. I don't even know where to begin with this. First - see all of the above. Second - I enjoy your "mortgage bailout will cause titanic devaluation of the dollar" theory, presented without one iota of support. It's unlikely to do so unless it's truly massive, like Iraq war size expenditure. Third - you know what causes the dollar to devalue more? Low interest rates. You know what causes rates to be kept low? Low growth. YOu know what causes growth to be low? Foreclosures, for one thing. Foreclosures hurt mortgage holders because they're essentially prepayments, and prepayments are the death of noteholders. WHen you foreclose on a home - everybody loses. The homeowner is homeless (and this imposes costs that are passed on to all of us - see above). The noteholder gets prepaid at a value of less than what he bought the debt for, so he's screwed. Basically everyobdy loses. Finally - i find this talk of a bailout being harmful especially ironic coming from a guy who represents bankrupt estates. The legal concept of bankruptcy is about using governmental protections to ensure that creditors and shareholders get paid and recoup some of their losses rather than promote instability and uncertainty. Doing the same thing in the case of mortgage debts though revolts and disgusts you? My question then is how you look at yourself in the mirror.
Sam, Your points are well taken. However, I am still against bailing out idiot consumerist Americans who took stupid loans. That's just plain daffy. as for the banks and other financial institutions - bailing them out should come with regulation to impede repeat performances of the same caliber. rhad
There will be plenty of new regulation. Part of the reason all the investment banks dropped today and led the markets down were the upcoming demands of the SEC: http://www.cnbc.com/id/24507044 But you have to get the financial markets working normally again before you can implement those regulations. Thus, the "bailouts" (the Fed is actually likely to make a net profit on the Bear Stearns thing, so I'm not sure it's really a bailout).
My thoughts on the housing crisis can be summed up in the words of legendary Sam Zell.... "this country needs a cleansing. We need to clean out all those people who never should have been in houses in the first place and who for sure shouldn't be getting sympathy."
The Fed bailout did come with strong signals that Wall Street was going to pay for their excess and getting the government involved in their mess. The problem with regulation is that too much will fritter away our world dominance in the financial market and too little will not give it the teeth to correct past wrongs. The world aint what it used to be. There are other places for people to put their money into, and many already consider London to be the world's financial capital.
Too bad unlike Sam Zell most of us keep our money and livelihood in this country and don't have millions or billions sitting offshore to fallback on when his cleaning plan collapses the financial system. Oh - and by the way, guess which person's Tribune Co. is at risk for $4bn worth of default on his loan covenants by 2009? http://moneynews.newsmax.com/money/archives/articles/2008/4/4/090633.cfm HINT: it's somebody mentioned in this post.......
This may be true at times - but if those other countries have less regulation, they are going to also have much higher instability, leading to the occasional huge crisis that will scare away investors. Overregulation is certainly bad, but proper regulation promotes financial health and stability. In terms of London - there were definitely some concerns with that and other places, especially due to SarBox. But if new companies are trying to avoid SarBox regulations and list abroad, it should also create some suspicions. I believe this past year, the US has gone back to being the primary place for new IPOs, though I'm not positive on that.
I know people who were mislead into believing they could have a piece of the American dream and home ownership, are the last ones who need sympathy. They are just a**H*****
A bankruptcy estate is not a bailout. That is the difference. A Chapter 13 plan cures the arrears over a period of between 36 to 60 months. The idea is to use the automatic stay imposed by 11 USC Sec. 362(a) to stop the foreclosure sale and allow the debtor to pay the creditor. Further, there was a proposal that passed the House, but stalled in the Senate that would have amended the Bankruptcy Code to either fix the interest rate during the pendency of the plan, or to allow a court imposed interest rate similar to that for automobiles under Till v. SCS Credit. The funds to pay the creditor comes from the debtor. It does not come from the government. Yeah Sam...that's roughly the same thing as the government putting up $300 billion to bail out these loans. Geez.
