None!

None!

sharing for photo @wifey

None!

haha!

None!

i was trying to find the name of this bird while at the cape ... could not find it and it appears on houzz.

None!

another hotel would be nice

None!

i have a client that does this every year

Kate Greubel doesn’t work on Wall Street, but she planned her upcoming vacation using the strategies of a shadowy and particularly risky corner of finance. And though most don’t know it, many other Americans are doing the same thing this time of year.

It started a few months ago, when Greubel got an airline email with some temptingly low fares. Based in the D.C. area, she and her boyfriend had been thinking about a getaway. The email triggered a search that ended with the couple booking an October trip to the Bahamas.

Just like that, she and her boyfriend had a beach vacation at a great price. They knew they were getting the deal because they planned to travel during hurricane season. Popular travel site CheapCaribbean.com says hurricane season discounts can be as deep as 60 percent from rates in February, low enough to spur many travelers to take a chance on a stormy season.

The risk Greubel was taking hit home in early October, when Hurricane Joaquin slammed into the Bahamas with brutal force. Loved ones who knew her plans were worried.

“All of our friends who knew we were going were sending us links and information,” Greubel remembered. “My boss said, ‘You do recognize it’s hurricane season, don’t you?’”

Suddenly the downside of the vacation gamble was all over the news. And it’s important to understand that’s exactly what the vacation was: a gamble. It’s risky in that it could have the high return of a great vacation on the cheap or the low return of a hurricane ruining the whole trip, maybe worse.

Those odds happen to be similar to those faced by investors who specialize in distressed assets. They place bets on companies and countries in their worst moments.

“These are things that will come very cheap because there’s a high likelihood that you could lose all of your money,” explained Seoyoung Kim, finance professor at Santa Clara University. “But there’s also that chance that you may hit a very huge payoff in the end.”

For example, some of these investors are currently focused on American Apparel, which recently filed for bankruptcy after a long nightmare of falling sales and drama involving its ousted founder. If the company turns around, it’ll make a killing. If not, it stand to lose just about everything it put in.

Professional investors can hedge bets by investing in many different distressed assets, so a few big wins make up for all the losses. Travelers considering a risky hurricane season vacation can hedge, too.

“You can take out travel insurance,” said Pauline Frommer, of the travel guidebook series that bears her family name. “Then you know you will get your money back.”

The U.S. Travel Insurance Association said coverage generally costs 4 percent to 8 percent of the trip’s total price. Frommer recommended shopping for insurance through comparison sites like SquareMouth and InsureMyTrip, which enable travelers to compare offers from different insurers. But just like on Wall Street, hedging can reduce returns. Whatever’s spent on insurance can eat up some of the money saved by booking during hurricane season.

As for Greubel and her own investment in Bahamas leisure, fortunately, she and her boyfriend had booked dates after the storm blew through. Their hotel is intact and their island getaway begins Wednesday.

They knew the risk and rolled the dice. It’s not that different for a hedge fund billionaire betting on a bankrupt company or a young couple wagering the winds won’t ruin their umbrella drinks. Gamblers shouldn’t make risky bets unless they can deal with the downside.

None!

is he/she talking to a toy pretzel?

None!

In our editorial meeting Friday morning, one of our colleagues at the BBC mentioned that North Sea cod was back on the menu.

The cod population has started to recover after decades of overfishing. Apparently Brits have been suffering through meals of sub-par haddock and chips.

That got our foreign editor, John Buckley, thinking about the economic value of a fish and a piece of pretty fascinating history: The Cod Wars.

The cod wars were basically a series of disputes between Iceland and Britain over fishing rights. At some point, the Brits sent Royal Navy warships to protect their fishermen. The Icelandic coast guard cut the nets of British trawlers — all over cod.

'There was bound to be animosity, because cod was the essential element of fish and chips," Buckley said. "The fish, traditionally, was cod. So don't threaten fish and chips if you want to keep peace with the Brits."

But really, is fish and chips from cod that much better than fish and chips made with haddock?

"Oh, it's night and day," Buckley said. "Cod is it. Now, I'll probably get complaints from the haddock council or whatever — but frankly, that's the truth."

None!

lol first lady's face

None!

TIL

I'll preface this piece of news by saying that I enjoy a good piece of pumpkin pie as much as the next guy — but this whole pumpkin spiced anything craze is just a travesty.

Anyways, it seems excessive rains in the Midwest have done damage to the pumpkin crop that's used to make canned pumpkin pie filling, so pick yours up early.

Also, just because I thought this was interesting, more than 90 percent of the American pumpkin crop comes from Peoria, Illinois.

None!

everyone is going to be dressed like a bunch of Mexican - Peruvians this winter.

None!

and a luxury market exists

None!

As the NHL season starts Wednesday, economic drama off the ice presents a challenge for the whole league, particularly Canadian teams. Low oil prices are helping drive Canada’s dollar down around 30 percent from its five-year highs against the U.S. dollar. That means big trouble for hockey, with its large Canadian presence.

Player contracts and the league’s salary cap are in American dollars. But hockey clubs located in Canada make money from ticket, food and beverage sales to fans paying Canadian dollars — leaving them financially squeezed.

Canadian hockey fans worry money troubles could hit hard, even driving Canadian franchises to relocate to America, as they have done before.

For William Watson, a McGill University economist who describes himself as having Montreal Canadiens “bleu-blanc-rouge” in his blood, the weak currency also raises fears that Canadian teams will have trouble winning championships.

“If there is a financial squeeze on the franchises, are they going to be able to buy the players that they need in order to get to the Stanley Cup?” he wonders. “Will it be another 20 years before we see a Canadian team win the Stanley Cup?”

None!

Amazon is cutting off sales of streaming products Apple TV and Google Chromecast. Amazon’s website will, of course, continue selling its own streaming device, Fire TV. Not coincidentally, it works rather nicely with Amazon’s streaming service Prime Video. Amazon is giving up a cut of hardware sales in an attempt to rule streaming media.

“The question is: Is the revenue from content distribution more than the device [revenue]? And the answer definitely is yes,” said University of North Carolina business professor Arvind Malhotra.

The battle for streaming customers is a tough one with no certain outcome, so Amazon’s using its e-commerce muscle to fight back against its formidable competitors.

“This is a clear winner-take-all market,” said Jerry Kim, who teaches strategy at Columbia Business School. “Once a lot of people are on a particular platform, you tend to get locked in. It’s very hard for people to switch out to another system. So I think they’re trying to race ahead and get more market share in this war to lock people out from other content providers.”

As news of Amazon’s move spread, some social media commenters questioned whether Amazon could face antitrust action. NYU law professor Scott Hemphill doesn’t see a strong case. And he was previously antitrust bureau chief for New York’s attorney general, so he’s always on the lookout for a good court battle. Actually, when Amazon and other powerful companies play hardball with each other, it can be pretty cool.

“These attacks on each other’s strongholds, we should applaud that,” Hemphill said. “The benefits for innovation and ultimately for consumers are potentially quite large.”

Amazon is a retail powerhouse. Apple has devices and iTunes. Google dominates search. If they fight it out hard enough, they might end up making something consumers will like.

None!

we need to plant our bulbs wife

None!

nah

None!

Russia sent warplanes into Syria for a second round of airstrikes Thursday. Moscow claimed it targeted five sites controlled by the group calling itself the Islamic State and other terrorist groups, including an ISIS ammunition depot and a command center. U.S. officials dispute the claim, saying the strikes were concentrated in areas controlled by rebel groups fighting the regime of Russian ally Bashar al-Assad.

The whole move had us wondering: Between cratering oil prices and economic sanctions, how can Russia afford to enter in such potentially long and costly conflict? We got on the phone with Steven Pifer, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he heads their Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Initiative. The interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Coming away from Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin's awkward meeting at the UN earlier this week, were you surprised that Russia started airstrikes?

No, because we've seen the Russians over the past three weeks deploy aircraft and assert ground presence there, so people I think understood this was coming but ... if there are going to be broader operations, you've got to overcome two obstacles which to my mind seem really large. One is: What's the role of Assad? Because Washington and Moscow have very different views of that. And then second: Who are we going after to bomb? U.S. focus is on ISIS, the Islamic State. The Russians are targeting, they say, ISIS and extremist groups, but "extremist" groups by the Russian definition probably covers almost everybody in Syria they would want to hit.



Courtesy:BBC
What can Russia actually afford to do in Syria?

Over the last seven years, the Russians have really increased their defense spending. They have more money, they have the capability, their pilots are better trained, they're getting more flight hours so they can do things like this. The actual operation so far in Syria is relatively limited; you're only talking about 30 to 35 aircraft. So that's something that should be sustainable for the Russian military.

The big question about cost is: What happens if they get sucked in, and it goes to more extensive air operations and — although the Russians take pains to say "airstrikes only no ground operations" — what happens if they get pulled in on the ground?

What are the chances of that?

Right now I think they want to keep it limited — in part because 69 percent of the Russian population oppose troops in Syria. On the U.S. side, we've done this a number of times: go in with a limited intention, but you can get pulled in in a bigger way. So, what happens if the Assad regime, even with the help of Russian airstrikes, still looks perhaps ready to fall? Would the Russians then put in ground forces to prevent that from happening? The Russians are now somewhat exposed. I mean, I'm sure they're doing everything they can for force protection, but what happens if ISIS or another group gets in there and attacks a Russian base and there are 30 or 40 Russian casualties? How do the Russians respond to that?

I go back and I remember in the '80s when the barracks were bombed in Lebanon, President Reagan basically said "this is not worth it," and we basically pulled out. I'm not sure Putin's the kind of person who reaches those conclusions. His tendency might be more to double-down, and then they get themselves on a slippery slope. The cost could increase pretty dramatically.

If they needed to send in troops, would they just have to find the money?

My guess is that for a limited ground operation, they could probably find the money. It would not be easy, but they could find the money. Certainly their intention is not to get in that ground operation, and if I had to bet on it, I'd say they probably can avoid it. But surprises happen, and again I go back to our experience in Vietnam. Advisers and airstirkes right? Within five years, we had 400,000 troops on the ground.

We think about Vietnam, and that memory is starting to fade here. They think very much about Afghanistan. Initially they went in 1979 with not only air power but with ground forces, and lost anywhere between 10 and 30,000 killed in action there. I think there's a reaction for most Russians, which is: We don't want to get involved in another Afghanistan.

You said you see these airstrikes as "sustainable." What do you mean by that?

I don't think it's going to be a huge burden on the Russian defense budget to sustain the sort of operations they're conducting now. I think they can sustain that, because the defense budget still is fairly well-off. There's been reporting now saying that because of sanctions and the low price oil, they have cut back some social programs; funding for education, health and even some reduction for the Ministry of Interior. There's been some suggestion that they maybe stretching out some of their procurement programs for the defense ministry, but my guess is that this is a level they can maintain without too much trouble.



Do have any sort of perspective on what this effort is costing them right now?

No idea at all. I mean, the cost that they're paying would be things like the cost of fuel, the cost of bombs. The planes — they've already invested in that asset, they've already got the trained pilots. In fact, the Russian military could be thinking this is actually not a bad way to sort of cycle through pilots so the pilots get some real experience in combat.

Forces that are being deployed out of country are eligible for I think it comes to something like $40 to $60 a day over and above their regular salary, so there's a marginal labor cost. But again, it's probably something that they can manage fairly easily as long as they don't get into a operation that's much much larger than what they have now.

Anything else I should know?

I think the main economic challenge for the city of Moscow now is not the cost to sustain this but: Does the price of oil continue to stay low? And I've heard projections saying that the range will be $40 to $60 [a barrel] at least until the end of 2016. That's not good news in Moscow. Although they're saying sanctions aren't a problem, I do think the economic sanctions are having an impact. When you look at the Russian economy, which is still contracting, it's hard to desegregate how much of that is due to the low price of oil, how much of that is due to sanctions and how much of that is just because for several years they did nothing to reform the economy and the economy is just not performing in an efficient way.

None!

so if i negotiated several raises then clearly i can make as many impulse purchases i want.

We all have bad habits when it comes to our finances. Personal finance expert Lauren Lyons Cole says that while these habits may seem harmless, they can really impact your financial health in the long run.

On impulse purchases:

I saw a study recently that said we spend about $115,000 over the course of our lifetime on impulse purchases. So that's a lot of money. Just think about the number of vacations you could take or the nicer house you could have bought if you just left some of those little, small things on the shelf at Target and didn't take them home with you. So you know it really does add up.

On leveraging your first salary:

If you can negotiate an extra $5,000 in your first salary ... that adds up to $500,000 in extra income over the course of your lifetime. You could make all the impulse purchases you want if you just negotiate this one $5,000 raise.

On why we make poor financial choices:

I think ignorance is a lot of it. Obviously we're not learning these things in school. A lot of our families aren't necessarily talking openly about money, which is why it's so important for parents to shift that dynamic and talk about these sorts of things with their kids from a young age, not that they're always going to listen, but it's worth it to try and get these lessons into their minds. Even just small shifts can make a big difference.

On how to stop these bad habits:

It's very hard to limit yourself ... my advice would be to actually take a bigger-picture perspective. So choose some sort of large goal. It might be a trip to Italy, it might be buying a new car, it could be starting a business. [Make it] something that will motivate you intrinsically so that you can start to make those changes. So be more careful with overdraft fees for instance, or upping your savings percentage because you're trying to work toward something exciting. Rather than limiting yourself, it's more about reaching something that's exciting.

On the times that finances seem overwhelming:

We tend to think that we can always save 15 percent towards retirement, or we can always pay a little extra towards our student loans. The reality is there are times in our lives where we can't. But these times are temporary, they're finite, and you have to have that perspective. You have to realize right now you might just be getting by, and that's OK. But make sure you have a longer-term perspective.