Links to the caricatures/cartoons that led to
the cowardly murders of 12 people in
Paris earlier today.
Old stuff related to this:
Fox
News: Bill O'Reilly South Park Muhammad Death Threats
Bill
Maher on Muslim Censorship in South Park
Wednesday, January 7, 2015
Al Rank and GhostDrop
A few short
years ago, Al Rank, a true veteran of
the large-format imaging (i.e., reprographics) business and industry, closed
down Precision Imaging (which was formerly called Precision Blueprint years
before). PBI’s business was restarted by
Elmer Rhoades (Elmer is the owner of three repro companies and Elmer recently
joined the IRgA Board.) Anyway, Al Rank
was one of the first people in the reprographics industry to convert his
reprographics business to “plain paper” (away from diazo) and later to “all
digital.” The other day, his name popped
into my mind, and, lo and behold, I found that he’s resurfaced … in a new
venture. Read on.
Here’s what
he was up to …. developing a new business venture, which launched early last
year, called “GhostDrop.”
“The most
insanely easy way to deal with file-sharing, organization and bidding in the
Architecture, Engineering and Construction (A/E/C) world.
Ghostdrop is
dedicated solely to the A/E/C world and has been created as a way to make the
bidding process simpler and easier.”
(per Linkedin):
Al Rank
is President at GhostDrop, LLC
Best wishes to Al and his associates at GhostDrop.
Monday, January 5, 2015
Everything looks terrific! (Blog Publisher's comments about the stock market in 2015)
THE GOOD NEWS:
Real Estate Prices.
Since 2009, real estate prices, in many parts
of the U.S., have risen significantly.
In 2011, you could have purchased condo properties in CdM, CA (part of
Newport Beach, CA) for around $600 per sq ft.
By now, prices have increased to $900 - $1,000 per sq ft. Prices for condo properties in NYC have
soared. Even Miami condo prices have
increased dramatically. (At the low
point, no one was buying anything in Miami, but now that situation has totally
turned around. Condo construction
activity is soaring the Miami area.)
Unemployment.
In late 2009 (specifically, November 2009),
the unemployment rate in the U.S. hovered around 10.8%. In November 2014, the unemployment rate was
reported to be 5.8%.
Link to where I got this info:
GDP in the
U.S.
Real gross domestic product -- the value of the production of
goods and services in the United States, adjusted for price changes --
increased at an annual rate of 5.0 percent in the third quarter of 2014,
according to the "third" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic
Analysis. In the second quarter, real
GDP increased 4.6 percent.
http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/gdpnewsrelease.htm
The price of oil has fallen …. a lot.
On December 8th, an article on The Economist explained, “Why
the oil price is falling”.
Note that at the time that article was authored, the price of crude had
fallen to around $70 per barrel. Since
then, the price of crude has continued to fall; today, it was reported to be at $50 per barrel. In June 2014, the price per barrel had risen
to $115.
Link to that article:
Stock
Market activity (equities):
The stock market gained significantly in years 2012 and
2013 followed by another decent uptick in year 2014. The stock market indices at the end of 2014
were quite significantly higher than
they were when the market hit its low point in the Spring of 2009.
Now
for the question … does all this “good news” mean that the stock market will
continue its rise?
I do
not think that will be the case.
Credit
spreads are, evidently, widening.
Per some charting I did today – on credit spreads, and
based on articles I read today about credit spreads – credit spreads,
evidently, are widening. The “credit
spread” is the difference between interest (current yields) on Treasuries and
Corporate Bonds of the same maturity (length).
A widening of the spread generally means (this assumes I actually
understood what I read about this) that investors are feeling more inclined,
rather than less inclined, to invest in Treasuries than they are in Corporate
Bonds. Many say that widening credit
spreads portend problems in the stock market.
Dr. John Hussman’s (the gent that many refer to as “the permabear”)
says that the stock market is grossly overvalued – he’s been saying this for at
least a couple of years by now, if not longer – and that the stock market is due for what could well be a very, very
major correction – to the downside.
To quote Dr. Hussman, these two sentences appear at the end of his most
recent “market comment” article, “I’ll
repeat emphatically what I noted a few weeks ago. The set of market conditions
that we observe at present are supportive for steep losses to emerge because present
conditions join compressed risk premiums with a measurable shift toward
risk-aversion by investors.”
You can read his Weekly Market Comments at:
BLOG PUBLISHER'S COMMENTS:
I
know, I know, I know! For every person
who says the stock market will fall, there’s another person who says that the
stock market will rise. I’m not an
economist, so WTF do I know. However, before you make your 2015 investment
decisions, consider these:
Murphy's law is an adage or epigram that is typically
stated as: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.
Finagle's Law of Dynamic Negatives (also known as Finagle's corollary
to Murphy's law)
is usually rendered: Anything that can go
wrong, will—at the worst possible moment.
Hanlon's razor is a saying that recommends a way of
eliminating unlikely explanations for a phenomenon (a philosophical razor). Never attribute to malice that which is
adequately explained by stupidity.
Segal's law is an adage that states: A man
with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two
watches is never sure. It refers to
the potential pitfalls of having too much potentially conflicting information
when making a decision.
Sod's law is a name for the axiom
that "if something can go wrong, it will", with the
further addendum, in British culture, that it will happen at "the worst
possible time". This may simply be construed, again in British
culture, as "hope for the best, expect the worst"
"Shit happens" is a common slang phrase, used as a
simple existential
observation that life is full of unpredictable events, either "Asà es
la vida" or "C'est la vie".
The phrase is an acknowledgment that bad things happen to people for no
particular reason.
And, consider this - - - in my convoluted
way of thinking, too much good news ends
up being bad news.
Personally, my
advice for those who are heavily invested in the stock market: It’s time to take your gains and pull
out. I believe 2015 will be a tumultuous
year for the stock market and that the market will fall this year. And, it will fall by more than 25%. If you get out now, you can get back in at a
lower cost. What’s wrong with that?
BEWARE OF RANSOMWARE!
There was a
very, very interesting article, yesterday (Sunday) in the “review” section of
the New York Times about “ransomware”.
Can you
imagine what would happen if, suddenly and without any warning, every (every!)
file on your laptop or desktop got “locked”?!!!
Well, that’s
what ransomware does. It locks-down
access to your files. Then, you get a
message that you have to pay a fee in order for the computer-crook who locked
your files to send you a decryption key.
Apparently, ransomeware
used to attack only PC’s, but, now, MAC’s are also subject to ransomware
attacks.
The best way
to avoid ransomware is to make damn sure that you do not “click-on” stuff that
you should not click on.
Nearly
every day, I get e-mails that ask me to click on something – to “update”
something or to get information about something, or etc., etc. – and I ignore
and immediately delete those e-mails. If in doubt, don’t do it, is a good rule
to follow!
Even when it
“looks like” the sender of the e-mail is someone you know (or a bank or
insurance company, etc. that you know), that does not mean that the e-mail
actually came from the “real” person
or “real” company. And, it does not mean
that the person you know actually sent the e-mail to you. (There are, I’m told, programs that grab
people’s address books and then send e-mails that look like they came from them
when, in fact, they have no idea that they sent you an e-mail (or that their
address book got grabbed and is being used.)
Nearly every
week, I get an e-mail – that says it comes from iCloud (and I’m a MAC user) -
and which asks me to click on something to update my information. I ignore and delete those e-mails. The other day, I received an e-mail from a
repro industry friend – there was no message other than “here’s some
information you’ll want to know about” … and a link to click on. It seemed fishy to me. If in
doubt, don’t do it. So, I deleted
the e-mail. I then sent a separate
e-mail to my friend to ask him about the e-mail I received from him. Never heard back. Someone must have grabbed his e-mail address
book.
Better safe
than sorry! (Thanks, mom.)
P.S. - back up your computer to an external hard-drive every day!
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