Yeah, the Mexican border is too vast to effectively police without dramatically increasing law enforcement manpower and building a huge guarded wall or something, all of which would be extremely expensive and highly problematic for the small government and Libertarian wings of the Republican party....

If we ever adopt a Citizen's Dividend, we damn well better actually tighten up the border and enforce it and allow it to only legal citizens and probably drop the birth clause in the Constitution.  I really don't know what the hell the Border Patrol does now that allows so many illegal-undocumented...

When I was 14 I worked in the parking lot of a giant flea market, and then I moved up to a car wash when I was 15.  I worked with a lot of Mexicans at both places, but it never felt like we were competing against each other.  Both were crappy jobs and they were always hiring at both places because ...

How could any state/region split off from the federal government and satisfy all the welfare needs of the people?

MediumTex wrote:
Those Chinese men are not going to want to snort some kind of industrial plastic.

They will be standing in line for it after Pfizer and Lilly give the drug an interesting name, and then come up with some more of their pseudo-erotic TV advertisements.

I appreciate the opportunity for anyone who enjoys tipping to tip.  A also appreciate the traditions of tipping in NYC, even thought it's difficult for me to relate to as I live in a relatively small Texas town. My concern is why is tipping necessary to insure an employee doing his/her job?  Outside...

What is to keep these insurance companies from waking up one day and greatly increasing policy premiums or reducing benefits?  What is to keep them from deciding they no longer want to participate in these types of policies and just cancelling the outstanding policies? I've also heard horror stories...

I am not a pharmacologist but I spent 38 years in the marketing department of the company that made Valium.  I spent many of my years marketing this product to the medical community,  Unlike other benzodiazepines, I have never heard of any success with diazepam other than oral and injectable applica...

Mark,

Thanks.  I use Excel and apparently it provides the same functions.  I can use these values for individual bonds, and then get fund/etf durations from morningstar.com.

I guess then just applying the durations on a dollar weighted basis would give overall duration for a bond portfolio.

Anyone know of a website where one can enter specific bond allocations (funds, etf"s, individual treasuries) and arrive at the average duration for the portfolio.

Pointedstick,

What did you use to create the charts in your OP??

I understand and agree with everything that has been said above.  However, my PP only accounts for about one quarter of my total portfolio.  It may be more some day. Being retired, an extremely large part is in fixed income, consisting of short to intermediate term instruments.  I also hold a fair a...

I was really interested in a recent thread that showed increasing the equity portion and decreasing the gold portion of the PP made little if no difference in long term returns.  Since I am currently at that ratio (35/50/15) I'm considering adopting that as a permanent allocation. My question is in ...

Does it really make any difference if this idiot was deranged or a racist or whatever.  When crowds of protesters are worked into a frenzy to the extent they cry for the death of police officers, sooner or later someone will step forward and try to become their "hero".  Add to this the Sha...

The answer is so obvious: "This is what we call smart power, using every possible tool and partner to advance peace and security. Leaving no one on the sidelines. Showing respect even for one’s enemies. Trying to understand, in so far as psychologically possible, empathize with their perspecti...

The answer is so obvious: "This is what we call smart power, using every possible tool and partner to advance peace and security. Leaving no one on the sidelines. Showing respect even for one’s enemies. Trying to understand, in so far as psychologically possible, empathize with their perspectiv...

As a practical matter I think you have to fudge a bit and make part of the 60% bond allocation a CD ladder, Treasury MM fund or the like, especially if you're in the distribution rather than accumulation phase. Buying individual treasuries is as you say the obvious option, but there's also the ETF ...

I still don't have a good solution on rebalacing a 30/60/10 portfolio.  I guess the simple way would be to do it annually just rebalacing back to original amounts.  That might be overkill, so another thought would be to rebalance when any one of the 3 assets gets to a certain percent over the origin...

Ah, the joys of airplane travel. IMHO, one should not be offended by someone reclining their seat the comically few inches it allows.  It's not YOUR area, it's THEIR seat.  Both parties should be polite about it.  Products like the Knee Defender are downright sorry, and only serve passive-aggressiv...

I find it uncomfortable as well.  But, I can't with good conscience recline my seat into your space if it makes you uncomfortable.  It seems as if it would be akin to my putting my briefcase or backpack under your feet, so it would give me more space for my feet.

On another popular financial forum a thread was locked before I could insert my two cents so I'm going to vent here.  The OP in that thread was complaining about being seated next to an obese person while flying "coach class".  The individual in the adjacent seat overlapped into the OP's s...

Not discontinued; no longer supported and no new versions. I have been using DiskCryptor for the last several months even though TrueCrypt is probably still safe [there was talk of vulnerability, but that seems to have gone away]. It is definitely lacking some of the advanced features of TrueCrypt,...

benko wrote: I am no fan of the current admin.  However, the Current administration was left a stinking turd by the Bush/Cheney gang. Let's picture a large corporation that's going down the toilet because of bad business decisions.  A new CEO is brought in to turn the company around.  Six years lat...

Yeah, I've heard that concern and it may be valid.  But is it actually a concern that any weird management activity could lead to a bond portfolio that's not in alignment with the PP, or is it a concern that it could lead to a financial default of the ETF?  I know there also some concerns with the g...

I have seen several threads relating to where is the best place for the LT bond allocation in PP.  If one can live with the 20yr maturity of TLT why not that over actually holding individual 30 yr treasury bonds? In the past I've done both, and the problem I've had is reinvesting dividends on the tr...