Users: nostrashamus: Market-Ticker - MarketTicker Forums

Market-Ticker - MarketTicker Forums

Content added from market-ticker.org

In response to Sprint sticking a white-hot poker up Verizon and AT&T's backside with their decision to sell the iPhone on prepaid Virgin Mobile service, Verizon has decided to screw you even harder!

The monthly data allowances start at one gigabyte for $50 a month and range up to eight gigabytes for $90 a month. There will be no fee or contract extension for current subscribers to move to the new plans.

Yeah, that's a good deal..... uh wait!

Oh, there is a $10/line cost too.

This is clearly a move in response to Virgin's "unlimited everything" $55/month deal.  But for those who don't need unlimited voice minutes Virgin's cost is $35/month per line for unlimited text and data, plus 300 voice minutes, or $45 for 1200 voice minutes.

So is Verizon "better"?  That depends.  For one gigabyte it may not be all that bad, but at $10/gig for each additional gigabyte it adds up fast.  Under certain circumstances (such as a family with a bunch of devices) it may make sense, but for a single person it almost-certainly does not.

Oh, and here's the real "screw you" job -- all the ads that every Android and iPhone app likes to spam you with?  You pay for them since they count against your data allowance.

Isn't that special?  You're being charged to be sent advertising -- with no "opt out."

Someone needs to think about the legal ramifications of such a "force-feed" model, I suspect, given that it's pretty much a contract of adhesion with no means to avoid it, especially when going over means getting charged extra.

For me? 

I still like my $45 unlimited voice, text and 5gb data with T-Mobile and think I'll keep it, but if I didn't qualify for that I'd still be on Virgin's $55 service.

PS: I'd be watching Verizon and AT&T's margins -- this sort of pricing response means they're feeling the heat, and fast -- which in turn means they may have some profit problems in quarters to come.

Disclosure: The author has a speculative position in Sprint, but no position in Verizon or AT&T.

I can't argue with the logic (which is usually the case when it comes to Janet ;-))

When performing due diligence, investors consider capacity, capital, and character.  Investors will develop a subjective opinion of character informed by their own standards and those of the society in which they live.

Oh, the three "Cs"?  I thought that was dead and buried in the 2000s Janet?  You mean it still matters? 

Some hedge fund managers feel they are above appearances, if not the law.  Some investors believe prostitution isn’t a big deal, too.  But there’s a large cohort of investors that won’t go near a hedge fund manager with a reputation for using prostitutes.

What else could go wrong?  If a prostitute is in a hedge fund manager’s apartment when he’s not home, what is she doing?  Who else is she letting in?  Does she have friends who are good at hacking computers?  What if the hedge fund manager gets caught up in a legal sting?  That could distract him from fund management for a while. Investors have a tough enough job performing due diligence without these potential problems.

Good point.

After all, at least in most parts of the United States prostitution (for both the seller and buyer) is illegal.  So is insider trading, incidentally, along with a whole host of other things.

And we don't know of any hedge funds that have gotten caught doing any of those other things lately, do we?  Oh wait....

See, this is the problem -- you can personally disagree with the law barring prostitution.  I can make a very cogent argument that the law is wrong -- that it actually causes harm, because it drives the behavior underground, provides fuel for the "pimping" of women (which can and often does amount to slavery rather than consensual contractual behavior) and in addition tends to provide "extra vig" that is then exploited by various criminal elements that are all about violence and coercion instead of contracts for service.

But the fact remains that if you're willing to break one law you might be willing to break other laws -- including laws that screw people in a non-sexual way.

Is this a fair evaluation?

You bet it is.

For those who are unaware there's somewhat of a nasty fight going on in Michigan associated with McCotter's seat.

A bit of background is required.

McCotter was off having a fun junket in Asia and didn't bother submitting actual unique and valid petitions to achieve the ballot in Michigan.  Kerry Bentivolio, however, did.

McCotter apparently did try to submit petitions, incidentally -- some 1800 of them.  There was a wee problem -- it appears that a material number of them were photocopies -- that is, duplicates, as only 244 signatures were valid.  This is of course illegal and when the petitions were looked at for validation they were tossed and as a result he will not be on the ballot.  He did draw a probe for this and may face prosecution (yeah!)

The Republican "establishment" is rather*****ed.  They ought to be*****ed at good old McCotter, who apparently thought that playing junket instead of bothering to qualify for the ballot was a great idea.  The good news is that Kerry Bentivolio, a man who I happen to support, is on the ballot (look to the right sidebar.)  He is "reputed" to be a Tea Partier; the truth appears to be that he understands what a balanced budget is and has as his headline:

Why I am Running: the System is Broken, the Economy is Broken, and Corruption is the Cause

Oh my.  And guess what -- the root stance of his candidacy is the rule of law being applied equally to everyone, The Declaration (that is, you have the right to life, liberty and pursuit (but not a guarantee) of happiness without interference by government) and he understands that what we have now is fascism -- indeed, this is what he says right up on his home page:

"Most people do not begrudge others their fortunes and success when it has been earned in a legal manner. Yet, most folks are rightly outraged when certain persons steal from the general populace by either engaging in illegal activity or purchasing special exceptions to the laws that apply to the rest of us. When certain persons buy favoritism from elected officials and profit off of our hard work, we all ought to be outraged. This is not capitalism, it is fascism." )

Banksters beware!

He also understands the 10th Amendment and supports it -- one of the few politicians who does.

So what is the jackboot party, uh, the Republican party, intending to do?  They're going to embrace Kerry and work to get him elected, right?

Nope.  See, they're in the pocket of those very same banksters and love corruption -- along with being addicted to stealing all your money and running serial ponzi schemes.

Nancy Cassis, a former State Senator, is threatening a "write-in" run to try to beat Kerry in the primary! 

Now this would be laughable but she's actually serious.  What's disgusting beyond words and ought to be felonious is how hard she tried to financially rape every Michigander when she was a State Senator.

I'm talking about this bill from 2006, SB 1360:

Introduced by Sen. Nancy Cassis (R) on July 26, 2006, to allow a local government to borrow money to establish a fund to pay the unfunded liabilities created by employee contracts that promise government workers lifetime health care benefits after they stop working.

Oh, but it gets better -- you see, issuing debt to fund an exponentially-expanding expense wasn't enough.  Nancy appears to have been well-aware that this was doomed to fail and that the bonds would eventually default -- after all, health care costs have risen by about 9% annually since 1980.  But don't worry, she had a solution for that -- the bill had a "poison" clause in it:

Sec. 519. Municipal securities issued under section 517 or 518 shall also be secured by the general fund of the county, city, village, or township and shall include the phrase "general obligation limited tax" in the resolution authorizing the issuance. The county, city, village, or township issuing the municipal securities is not authorized to levy any tax not authorized by law at the time the municipal securities are issued to pay for the municipal securities.

Read that carefully.  If you're confused it's probably because you were supposed to be confused.

What it says is that the municipality cannot impose a tax they could not otherwise impose (e.g. a new tax) but that if the borrowing was to fail -- say, for instance, the return on the invested capital was insufficient to cover the bond principal and interest and/or the exponential growth of these medical expenses simply overwhelmed the money available, then you would be assessed on your other taxes, such as property taxes, without the right to vote it down, to cover the deficiency.

And what was the original purpose of this bill? 

To cover the outrageously generous lifetime medical benefits of state and local municipal employees -- you know, all those wonderful unionized folks who have gold-plated pensions and can retire at 50 while the rest of you -- the working man and woman -- starve!  This, for an expense profile that at the time was known to be growing at roughly 9% compounded a year, and still is -- that is, an expense profile that doubles every eight years.

This is the woman who wants McCotter's seat.  She is the worst sort of politician, the type who tries to sneak through in the dead of night bills that will impose outrageous taxes on you to pay off the favored few to cover benefits that are impossible to pay, were known to be impossible to cover when they were promised, and are guaranteed to impoverish you.

THAT is the "mainstream" Republican Party and the reason they don't like Kerry is that he refuses to play the "screw you, the common man, for the benefit of the 1%" game.

Nancy Cassis, along with the entire Rethuglican establishment that supports her, need to be pelted with rotten tomatoes and eggs until they cede the stage and are driven from public life.

Elect Kerry Bentivolio and put a stop to this crap in the 11th District of Michigan.

Do you believe me now?

The net worth of the American family has fallen to its lowest level in two decades, according to government data released Monday, driven by a more than 40 percent drop in their stakes in their homes.

The Federal Reserve’s detailed survey of consumer finances showed families’ median wealth plunged from $126,400 in 2007 to $77,300 in 2010 — a 39 percent decline. That put them on par with median wealth in 1992.

Where did it go?  To the banksters, who took your wealth and used it to cover their fraudulent credit creation.

And who made this possible?  Your government, who you continue to support and demand..... commit yet more fraud (just "against someone else please!")

The Fed’s data underscore the depth of the wounds of the Great Recession and how far many families remain from healing. The median value of Americans’ debt did not change between 2007 and 2010. Meanwhile, the housing market crash inflicted particularly severe damage, with the Fed showing that the median value of Americans’ equity in their homes plunged 42.3 percent between 2007 and 2010. 

That "equity" was never real.  It was a phantom created by the banksters out of whole cloth -- an out-and-out pyramid scheme and a fraud.  The FBI warned of it years before the bubble burst and the appraisers sent a petition to Congress in the early part of the 2000s warning of it too.  George W. Bush actually sued states to prevent them from putting a stop to it and Obama has refused to bring a single indictment related to it.  Your Congress, Democrat and Republicans alike, have not only refused to demand investigations and prosecutions but have handed over trillions of dollars of deficit spending to explicitly cover over the fraud that would have otherwise sunk these institutions and then on top of it made balance sheet lies legal.

You ate all of this, and you should -- but in a just world where fraud was not the business model of choice the banksters would eat it too and would be long out of business and most of them would be broke.

That's the only way to effectively stop this sort of misbehavior -- make damn sure it hurts, so that when you do this and the bubble bursts, both the borrowers and lenders get reamed.

But remember folks, "Nobody committed any crimes", according to all three  of the major Presidential Candidates.

Comments

No comments yet.

...