Invisible Hand Kills Hybrid Car Sales

From the Financial Buff:

Sales of hybrid vehicles dropped 43% in December 2008 compared to a year ago. While sales of other cars also dropped, hybrid car sales dropped a lot more. The obvious reason is lower gas prices. When people were buying Toyota Prius above MSRP with a long waiting list, they said they were doing it for the environment, which is partly true. The payback time from fuel savings was already pretty long back then. Now that the payback period is even longer, apparently the environment is no longer a priority for a lot of people.

You’ve got to give it to Adam Smith. The invisible hand regulates people’s concern for carbon footprint or dependence on foreign oil. When they have money, they care about the environment. When they don’t have money, many people no longer need a good citizenship status symbol. It makes sense to me.

http://thefinancebuff.com/2009/01/invisible-hand-kills-hybrid-car-sales.html

Jousting

The Worst Car in Creation

Competition is tough for The Worst Car in Creation, but the Yugo easily trumps the others for unadulterated incompetence and unintentional hilarity.

The subcompact car was based on the Fiat 127 and 128 - not a good move it you intend to build a car for the ages, or even just something with 4 wheels and an engine. You might say the only thing wrong with the Yugo was everything.

Callers to “Click and Clack," the Tappet Brothers' radio show on NPR, summed up the Yugo experience like this:

“The Yugo’s first stop after the showroom was the service department: ‘Fill ‘er up and replace the engine!’”

Another caller said, “I once test drove a Yugo, during which the radio fell out, the gear shift knob came off in my hand, and I saw daylight through the strip around the windshield.”


www.minyanville.com/articles/index.php?a=18395

Meatball Bubble Gum - Gift for Idea for Xmas

These meatball-shaped, bubble gum flavored gumballs are super tasty and
extra chewy. If you don’t believe us, just look on the back of each
package where Manny the Meatball proclaims, “Atsa chewy meatball.” How
can you doubt the emphatic assertion of a talking meatball?

http://www.mcphee.com/items/11898.html

Let's Get Lazy

excerpt from article-


Unless you're working full-time in the financial world, you don't have the skills, tools, information, time or interest in playing the market, especially the bond market. And even if you do play the market, the odds are you'll lose because the more you trade the less you earn; transaction costs and taxes kill returns. So for 94 million out of America's 95 million investors, being a lazy investor is the best defensive strategy.


In fact, even the hotshots working full-time in the financial world follow the same strategy with the bulk of their assets. It's their biggest secret. Mutual fund managers making an average $400,000-plus playing the market with your money, often lock away the bulk of their retirement assets in safe, untouchable portfolios using a variation of a lazy portfolio strategy. Why not, they're no dummies, they've got families to protect too.


Lazy portfolios are simple, well-diversified portfolios of three to 11 no-load index funds, either mutual funds or ETFs. But, unfortunately, Wall Street doesn't want you to use this Nobel Prize-winning strategy because it can't rake off enough in transactions fees from index funds.


link to lazy portfolio article