- Ralph Nader's new sort-of-novel: "If you've ever thought to yourself that the fiction you've been reading doesn't contain enough in-depth accounts of what people said at meetings, then this book will be a revelation."
- The sort-of-death of the marriage proposal
- Kyoto Protocol: more than sort-of-dead.
- People who sort-of-want to open a restaurant
- US trade imbalances: only sort-of-improved.
Copyright © 2010 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
So, did he propose?
If a kink farm is an open thread.....
The Financial Crisis and the CRA
...Bank of America reported that nonperforming CRA-eligible loans were a significant drag on its third-quarter 2008 income. Its earnings report states: “We continue to see deterioration in our community reinvestment act portfolio which totals some 7 percent of the residential book. . . . The annualized loss rate from the CRA book was 1.26 percent and represented 29 percent of the residential mortgage net losses.”...
The Performance and Profitability of CRA-Related Lending (PDF)
...nearly 90 percent of large banking institutions report higher 30-89 day delinquency rates for CRA-related home purchase and refinance lending than for overall home purchase and refinance lending....
... Delinquency rates for CRA loans are twice that for non-CRA loans in the market for home purchase and refinance (1.57 percent v. 0.79 percent)....
Sorry, that should be "link farm" above, although a "kink farm" would probably attract more comments. :-)
The delinquency rates came from here.
A green shoot to ponder. Green as in grass growing around them.
http://www.aar.org/NewsAndEvents/PressReleases/2009/10_WTR/101509_RailTraffic.aspx
This time last year was 6 months into a recession, no?
Derek
I think Demetri Martin does a joke like this.... :)
Assuming the video isn't a fake as some believe, this Beta schmuck definitely wishes that marriage proposals were not sort-of dead, but dead, period.
What? No links to Fox (sort of) News this time? I rely on this (sort of) Atlantic space as my Fox Digest.
i'm not letting this one slide. did he propose or what? there's no way you'd link such a link w/o a "he did! isn't he the best!" or a "it's not too late, mofo" behind it
Bah! Perhaps Kyoto is merely pining for the fjords.
My wife is a biz broker, and she helps people buy and sell lots of little restaurants. Her experience convinced us to not go anywhere near the restaurant biz: it's too much work if you run them yourself, and most restaurants don't generate enough revenue to hire good managers if you want to run them absentee. Lower-end restaurants with a lot of cash and inattentive management will have employee theft, which sux and eats precious revenue, and higher-end restaurants require careful planning to run them effectively.
The sad thing is my wife often sees business plans where are obviously doomed to fail. One near our house was a low-end casual concept with computers in a place with $27,000/month rent. People dumped their kids there to eat burgers and spend three hours playing games online. It didn't last six months.
I sort-of guess that proposing marriage is more of an equal opportunity/joint project now than it used to pretend to be.
But I kind-of guess that Megan understands that better than I do.
Even if you know the answer 100% beforehand, you still have to at least get on one knee and ask.
Not doing so just seems... wrong. I mean, it's such a great moment for her.
Kneel before Zod!