The Soviets launched significant attacks on Christmas (Dec 25th one) during WW2 against the Germans/Romanians/Italians/Hungarians/Bulgarians/Croats etc. They assumed a lot of the soldiers would be recovering from extra wine rations or otherwise not 100% vigilant. I think the Germans launched counte...

That Bullion DNA looks pretty cool -- https://www.mint.ca/en/bullion/bullion-dna -- That is pretty cool. Gold is such a great metal for that type of a security feature. I think that stamping a diffraction grating or something into the coin is a great idea. Something that you could never hope to acc...

And money can keep getting laundered back to crooks in the USA, probably via crypto. Weapons go to Ukraine, weapons get sold to God knows who for crypto, crypto payoffs get transferred back to US gov't officials and the shadow government, some money goes into political campaigns to keep the scam go...

I see they suggest not buying 22K gold coins and sticks with 24K for the reason I mentioned above. Is your timbre check what will help me detect a fake if it passes this plastic test? Yes, the ring test needs to be done in combination with the size and weight test. It may be possible to construct a...

Train your ear. Use known good coins. If it meets size, weight and timbre (rings true), it is as good a gold. You've found the philosopher's stone if you can make a base metal match gold for size and weight and timbre. And even the most wretched man can check that with a scale, an eye and an ear. N...

Dec 7 (Reuters) - Vanguard Group Inc is pulling out of a major investment-industry initiative on tackling climate change, the world's biggest mutual fund manager said on Wednesday, explaining it wants to demonstrate independence and clarify its views for investors. https://www.reuters.com/business/...

Someone else on the forum, I can't remember who, pointed out that cash lost value to inflation this past year, therefore cash sucks and stocks are the way to go. That was the gist of the poster's point anyway. I thought to myself, well, wait a minute. Cash has a steady nominal value and has lost va...

Either way, I am less psychologically burdened by a given drop in portfolio value when I'm 4x25 than when I'm, say, 60/40. The "firewalls" between the asset classes do their thing. The firewalls are a good thing, but they do seem to break down during tight money recessions like the one we...

Hal wrote: ↑Wed Sep 21, 2022 3:19 am The picture says it all....

It actually doesn’t. What time period does the plot represent?

One credit union is listing 4% for 5 year cd. https://www.depositaccounts.com/cd/5-year-cd-rates.html At some point these rates start looking really tasty. 4% is 40k income per year on 1m deposit. 4% interest also happens to be a -4.5% real return (current CPI is 8.5%). Meaning you're effectively l...

If you drop LTT, when would you see yourself buying back into them? Not sure. I suppose a good time to buy back in might be when LTT interest rates are high enough that (1) they exceed inflation, and (2) there would be decent annualized price appreciation if interest rates were to drop back down ne...

I taught my first girlfriend how to drive stick on our first date. Had a blast and scored major points.

Get your minds out of the gutter, you reprobates!

What kind of allocation are you considering switch to? This is a game that I love to play, because I enjoy tinkering with portfolio backtesters. I haven't done enough homework to identify a better allocation, but the basic idea I've been toying with is to drop LTTs and reallocate that piece to othe...

dualstow wrote: Have you all read the b’heads thread on Yubikey & Vanguard?

Searching "Yubikey" on the Bogleheads forum just now turned up multiple threads. If your sig comment is referring to a particular one, could you provide a link to it?

One of the assets in the PP is almost always going to be rat poison, often for a decade or longer. Right now that is LTTs. There is nothing new under the PP sun. [...] Thanks, Blue Ruin, I always enjoy reading your thoughtful, philosophical posts about the PP. Over the past couple of years, I've be...

Mass Shootings seem to be capturing attention. I believe there is something like an average of 10 mass shootings per week in the US. https://www.npr.org/2022/05/15/1099008586/mass-shootings-us-2022-tally-number https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting Back in less propagandistic tim...

I'm trying to wrap my head around something. If rising rates are deflationary, when do bonds benefit from it? Because we all just witnessed bonds get slaughtered amidst the prospect of rising rates. Who says "rising rates are deflationary"? I think it's important to distinguish between ca...

He has more posts about the war in Ukraine if you go past the first page and look at older posts, or even better, just search for the label "Ukraine":

http://ad-orientem.blogspot.com/search/label/Ukraine

Desert wrote: ↑Wed May 04, 2022 11:57 am

dualstow wrote: ↑Wed May 04, 2022 9:14 am I wonder what Ad Orientem thinks about all this.

Good question. It would be nice to have him back.

Looks like he's posted about it on his blog, which is listed on his forum profile:

http://ad-orientem.blogspot.com

The posts generally seem pro-Ukraine, anti-Putin.

I thought this reaction by Elizabeth Warren was pretty unhinged, too.

The Dems have been choosing some interesting hills to die on this year.

(By the way, shouldn't this thread be in the Politics subforum?)

I understand you’re not swallowing the noble Ukraine narrative wholesale. And I’m not putting a blue and yellow flag in my window to signal how righteous I am — I see it in my neighborhood and roll my eyes. But, I am genuinely curious as to what you think is going on. Beyond the nobody-knows-for-su...

Fair question. For months, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov and many other Russian officials repeatedly denied Russia planned to invade Ukraine – and then invaded anyway. I put this to Peskov: after all those lies, how can anyone ever believe Russia in future negotiations? - Christiane Amanpour h...

Just curious about the thought process among some of the posters in this thread, so a couple of questions: When a civilian building is attacked in Ukraine, and Russia denies that it did it, is it possible that Zelensky's administration ordered it in an attempt to maintain power by pulling other nati...

When I saw Russian tanks stopping because citizens were standing in front of them, it became clear that they weren't using their full available force. Can you imagine standing in front of a German tank in WWII? That wouldn't end well. So yeah, it looks like they're trying to take over without using...

Now I feel like my posts aren’t being read. Page 1, first response to Maddy [...] Thanks for the reminder, dualstow. I sometimes don't remember everything that people have written on previous pages of a long thread. My complaint about it seeming like my post wasn't read wasn't directed at you and X...