Vile Banks

So recently I've been trying to move all my banking activities to one location because of the pain involved with have your finacials spread over many different insitutions with many different rules.

So let's go through the history of my bank accounts

San Diego County Credit Union
Maybe I shouldn't have go rid of this one, but considering how painful it was to try to close the account 2300 miles away, I think it would have been just as painful to maintain it as well.

Terre Haute First
This bank sucks. Majorly. At least they have internet banking now. I think I gave up using them my sophomore year.

First National Bank of Monterey
So it was the only bank that I could find that would give me an auto-loan without a co-signer and with only one paycheck as a college graduate. That was nice of them. But they don't have internet banking so its a pain in the ass for me to check up on my accounts (like a checking account that pays no interest and my auto loan). I have my autoloan and $15k consolidated student loan auto-debiting from this account

First Federal Savings Bank
Why can't one bank have the best rates for everything? So I have my house loan through these folks, since it was a moderately good rate and I didn't need a co-signer or a humugous down payment, they offer interest on their checking account... at a whopping 0.75%. They have internet banking but it leaves just a little bit to be desired. And their ACH doesn't show up in all the databases like it should, which means sometimes you can't do electronic check transfers. I have my home loan and my parent's $65k student loan auto-debiting from here.

Netbank
So a friend of mine told me about this bank, they'd been using them for like 7 years and haven't had any troubles with them. This person had also worked at a bank for quite some time, so I take her word on how banks work inside. Anyhow they have awesome rates. Like the money market account I have with them is making like 2.2% right now. So they don't have any branches, but that doesn't really bother me anymore since I seem to move around enough that I just want to have one bank to do everything from, and I know that I'll never find a bank with branches everywhere I'll be. They also have a cool thing that interfaces with lots of credit card companies and brokerage and insurance firms so you can have all your important money sucking information displayed on your main banking page. But they've been having internet throughput problems lately.

So now that I'm splitting my paycheck three different ways and trying to maintain a big enough buffer in each account (especially the one without internet banking, meaning it doesn't export stuff to quicken) I'm starting to really feel the pain of having small fractions all over the place that I can't use to pay off all the misc balances I have around.

So my reconmendation to all of you is to pick a REALLY GOOD bank before you start setting up auto-debiting for loans so you get your nice loan rates on those colsolidated student loans

Goodbye Cruel World

What would happen to the United States if it were to close its doors to the rest of the world?

This question has been plaguing me for quite some time. It really came to the front of my mind when I stumbled across this page on yahoo: which shows Iran's “Deputy Revolutionary Guards Commander” Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr at a conference titled: “The world without America”.

Strangely enough when drafting this post I came across this webpage. So it’s Rush, I don’t really care for the guy all that much but the page does sum up things somewhat well.

Now for a Gedankenexperiment .

Lets say the United States were to implement the following policy tomorrow:
A) All ships in port have 24 hours to leave or else be seized if not ported in the United States.
B) All ships from that point that enter the United States waters would be seized.
C) All arriving foreign nationals would be screened to determine if it is the best interests of the United States to remain.
D) Reduce flights in and out of the United States to virtually zero. (Eventually after all citizens outside of the Unite States had a chance to return).
E) Evicted the UN from their HQ. Give them 24 hours to comply before all records are seized (Although from an intelligence stand point it would be better to have a false fire alarm and not let any of those evacuated back to the premises). Oh and of course ending out membership in things like the UN, NATO, WTO, etc.
F) Ended all trade
G) Defaulted on all debts (For the next reason).
H) Set the dollar value on something gold or platinum. (Depending which is easier with how much money is in our economy and how much of the stuff we have). This because we would have zero currency exchange with the outside world.

So lets see what sort of results would I expect?
A) Well pretty much every economy in the world would collapse
B) There would be widespread famine in the world
C) Americans would have a short period of hardship while they adjust to the shock, while the stock market recovers from its huge drop.
D) The United States CPI would probably drop, so would GDP. Though I would guess that it would be short lived since the monetary system would be based on a good that we have and the inflation could then be easily controlled.
E) If done this way I doubt we would have all that high of unemployment other than the initial shock.

That is what the world would be like without the United States. With more thought I could probably add quite a bit of detail to this post, but for the moment I’ll just let y’all peruse it.

Editor's Note:
I thought I'd end this thing with a joke: "You know the world is going crazy when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the tallest guy in the NBA is Chinese, the Swiss hold the America's Cup, France is accusing the U.S. of arrogance, Germany doesn't want to go to war, and the three most powerful men in America are named 'Bush', 'Dick', and 'Colon'. Need I say more"

Food for thought

GM, Ford, and Chrysler spend more per year on health insurance than steel.

The end of humanity.

I grew in a fairly isolated environment, home schooled. I didn't go to public school or socialize with children my age. Mostly after any sort of formal education assignment was finished during the day I would run over to any number of misc neighbors and help them with whatever they were doing. Whether it was Tim (mexican-american who worked for a catering company) to the North of me to help him remodel his house, or Dan (pretty much as close as you can get to a real coyboy these days) to the south of me to work on whatever project that had caught his fancy that day, I fairly broad exposure to different kinds of people and ideals. I grew up tolerant of people, and mostly with ideals that I thought were liberal.

For the longest time I have noticed that my tolerance (and as some would call it, open-mindedness) has been steadily declining. The only thing I can attribute this to is the numerous arguments/debates/discussions I have participated in, both in college and out. I find myself in a terrible dilemma, I try to hold a discussion with a so-called liberal, and am assaulted by the utter lack of logic they posses. Even those in college that I would somewhat respect I later notice they can absorb and regurgitate material well but they can't generate new thoughts. Being from an engineering school this has actually scared, and scarred, me quite a bit. I realize they are not willing to observe the facts, expand their mind, and extrapolate the truth from them. In fact they are more closed minded than what they accuse me of.

And when I get fed up with all of that I flip over to the conservative side. And again I see the SAME thing. People are still not willing to think for themselves.

So now I'm reduced to believing that there are two different kinds of people. Those with logic and those without. They will never be able to come to common ground. I am forced to reject my childhood education and belief that all people are created equal and thus deserve the same respect. Now I have to revise that to be, all people may be created equal, but some have rejected that which separates them from the apes, and thus should be treated accordingly.

I regret this new thought greatly, but how many times do I have to listen to people puke up what they've been spoon-fed without a tiny bit of analysis or healthy skepticism. I must now think about the two classes of people, monkeys and humans. Those who cannot (or refuse) to question their personal axioms I judge now to be monkeys and order them to read (for a start) Descartes, Kant, Mills, and Rand lest they vote their consciousness out of existence.

Editor's Note: Ironically this follows what happened in the writings of Mills as he aged. I truely hope in my heart that doesn't mean that my conclusion is as right as it would seem to make it.