I bought a Ford Fiesta from Robins Ford in Costa Mesa on Friday, July 30. It's a great car. The price was good. The salesman was helpful and intelligent and didn't do car salesman B.S ( Read more... )

kniwt was kind enough to point out that I was right in March 2007, and others have been kind to point out that I was right in July 2003 about the oncoming subprime mortgage tsunami ( Read more... )

Finally pushed over the limit by this asshole (youtube video):

The talk radio mouths and the right-wing press have locked on to their version of the financial crash, and why foreclosed homeowners should not receive help.

The problem, they say, is that "political pressure" forced lenders to make bad loans to those who didn't deserve them qualify. ( Read more... )

I've been to the pharmacy twice in the last two days, once to leave off a prescription and once to pick one up. Both days the line has been at least 15 people long to pick up and about half that to drop off. This is maybe 3 times as long as usual ( Read more... )

From today's Wall Street Journal:"The margin calls hit some chief executives who had borrowed to buy company stock. These included Chesapeake Energy Corp. Chief Executive Aubrey K. McClendon, who was forced to sell nearly his entire stake in the company, which he had accumulated in recent years, including a $43 million purchase in July. "These ( Read more... )

Today I had to submit a financial form to the office. I work remotely, so I couldn't just fill it out and drop it by the finance person's office. The question was: how to get it there ( Read more... )

I heard a carnival barker-style bellowing ad on the car radio yesterday while listening to the all-news AM station. It was the usual mortgage broker appeal to refinance, this time with the added warning that rates were going up. The ad concluded:

"It's the biggest no-brainer in the history of Mankind!

There were a few news items about the mortgage catastrophe today. Instead of saying "hey everyone the so-called subprime market was usury and fraud and soon it will all collapse and we will pay and pay and pay," they said that there was "increasing concern" about the "dip" in the "subprime market" and that foreclosures were occurring. Also, big ( Read more... )

There is a Yahoo! Discussion Group solely devoted to pissed-off investors in Diedrich Coffee ( Read more... )

You may have seen these things, I get a couple a month. A check arrives in the mail. Sometimes it's an actual negotiable check, or if not it's a binding voucher of some kind. It's for a large sum of money, made out to me. If I cash it, it turns into an unsecured loan. I've always been curious why everyone wants to loan me $5000-$8000 without ( Read more... )