Lonely this New Year's Eve?

Maybe you could use a Horniman's Anis.

RIAA declares war on its customers

The RIAA says it's illegal to buy a CD and put it on your computer:

In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.

The industry's lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are "unauthorized copies" of copyrighted recordings.

F___ them. I'm not buying any more CDs from RIAA members. Indie labels and band-produced CDs, sure. But I'll be damned if I spend one more dollar supporting the evil RIAA.

Pimco's McCulley on the economy

You have to put up with his silly gimmick of writing his whole column as a conversation with a pet rabbit, but here's the money quote:

The essence of Minsky’s [Financial Instability Hypothesis] is that stability is destabilizing because capitalists have a herding tendency to extrapolate stability into infinity, putting in place ever-more risky debt structures that undermine stability.

Minsky had that exactly right, I think. McCulley, not so much. He's great at describing what's happened in the rear-view mirror, but he hasn't made any significant forward-looking calls. I went to a lunch where he spoke more than a year ago, and I pressed him on the unsustainable nature of Greenspan's serial bubbles. He seemed to agree with the premise of the question, but had no appreciation for the magnitude of the fallout that was to come.

W.C. Varones Blog's 2007 Man of the Year: the American Consumer

He's stubborn, stupid, and suicidal as a lemming.

It's not just houses. Joe Six-pack has found a way to get into house-sized debt on a car:

When Jennifer and Bobby Post traded in their 2001 Chevy Suburban last year for a shiny new Ford F-350 turbo diesel with an extended cab, it seemed like a great deal. Even though they still owed $9,500 on their SUV after the trade-in value, they didn't have to put a penny down.

The dealership, near the Posts' home in Victorville, made it easy; it just added the old debt to the price of the new truck and gave the couple a seven-year, $44,276 loan.

Wonders of life

Surprise! Nicole Kidman, 40, is fertile as a teenager... now that she's married to a straight guy.

As if you needed another reason not to date a Jersey girl

Assemblyman John F. McKeon (D-West Orange):

"New Jersey faces some of the nation's highest HIV rates among women."

Put-option ARMs come home to roost

Today the LA Times reports something we told you almost a year ago: people with pay-option ARMS on underwater houses will stop paying their mortgages.

That's why we call them put-option ARMs: the buyer has a free option to put the underwater house back to the bank! No money down, home values dropping, payments increasing -- hmmmm.... what to do????

Only the truly stupid would continue making mortgage payments on a negative-equity house. And only the truly stupid would have written these loans to buyers who had no skin in the game in the first place.