Remember when

[BlueStreak]

Grasp at those straws.....I have all night.

Actually, I don't. Pretty worn out. Cut the grass and tried to clear all of that damn honeysuckle out of my Holly tree. Arms are all scratched up. Stuff smells nice but grows like three feet an hour and gets into everything.

[Charles]

Originally Posted by BlueStreak

Grasp at those straws.....I have all night.

Actually, I don't. Pretty worn out. Cut the grass and tried to clear all of that damn honeysuckle out of my Holly tree. Arms are all scratched up. Stuff smells nice but grows like three feet an hour and gets into everything.

I should have mowed my weed patch today, but I went to the lumberyard and picked up a quote on LVL's and current lumber prices instead. And I shook the money tree. Tomorrow I can do bids.

These people are gonna SHIT whenever I tell them what these LVL's are gonna cost. They can afford it, but they're still gonna shit. They're wanting to span 24 & 26 feet without posts, but I can do it with 2x12's with posts for 25-30% of the cost of the LVL's. Hell, we could probably set steel cheaper.

But I'm old school. Why do you want to trade something that's worked for a thousand years for a bunch of shit wood & glue at three times the price?

I don't have that much faith in glue.

Chas

[BlueStreak]

Originally Posted by Charles

I should have mowed my weed patch today, but I went to the lumberyard and picked up a quote on LVL's and current lumber prices instead. And I shook the money tree. Tomorrow I can do bids.

These people are gonna SHIT whenever I tell them what these LVL's are gonna cost. They can afford it, but they're still gonna shit. They're wanting to span 24 & 26 feet without posts, but I can do it with 2x12's with posts for 25-30% of the cost of the LVL's. Hell, we could probably set steel cheaper.

But I'm old school. Why do you want to trade something that's worked for a thousand years for a bunch of shit wood & glue at three times the price?

I don't have that much faith in glue.

Chas

Yeah, me too. I'd do beams-n-posts, or even some really stout truss work, (If you really want to avoid posts.), long before I'd trust that particle board and Elmers BS.

[bobabode]

Originally Posted by Charles

I should have mowed my weed patch today, but I went to the lumberyard and picked up a quote on LVL's and current lumber prices instead. And I shook the money tree. Tomorrow I can do bids.

These people are gonna SHIT whenever I tell them what these LVL's are gonna cost. They can afford it, but they're still gonna shit. They're wanting to span 24 & 26 feet without posts, but I can do it with 2x12's with posts for 25-30% of the cost of the LVL's. Hell, we could probably set steel cheaper.

But I'm old school. Why do you want to trade something that's worked for a thousand years for a bunch of shit wood & glue at three times the price?

I don't have that much faith in glue.

Chas

Obsolescence has been the standard for building shit for a while. Tell 'em steel is the way to go.

[piece-itpete]

So has Obie accompished what he said he'd do regarding unemployment? Remember?

Perception will be the end of him. The onliest reason he's got half a chance is the right's weakish candidate.

Pete

[d-ray657]

Originally Posted by piece-itpete

So has Obie accompished what he said he'd do regarding unemployment? Remember?

Perception will be the end of him. The onliest reason he's got half a chance is the right's weakish candidate.

Pete

But, do you remember the gloom and doom forecast in '08-09?

Regards,

D-Ray

[Arkay]

Originally Posted by d-ray657

...

We don't have a booming economy, but it appears that we have survived economic Armageddon.

Regards,

D-Ray

Sorry to say this, but that's a superficial judgement based on too short a time scale, and too little understanding of what happened, and is happening. We didn't SURVIVE Armageddon. The risk of imminent collapse was shifted and postponed, partly "cured" and partly exchanged for what we are just beginning to experience the early stages of, now.

Have you looked at inflationary trends recently? At the value of the US$ against world currencies? At what is happening in the Euro zone? Scratched the surface in China, to glimpse what lies beneath?

Obama printed money on a mind-boggling scale and increased America's debt in an exponential fashion, something almost unprecedented in world history, even in times of war, outside of hyper-inflationary periods that have always (in every single instance) led to collapse. He has put the US and its currency in an untenable, essentially bankrupt position. In doing so, he bought a period of relative, but false, prosperity (well, you'd hardly describe it as prosperity, but it staved off the real pain for a while)... but it has been the sunshine before the rain.

We are heading for serious inflation.
We are heading for serious unemployment.
The pain didn't go away, we just took a painkiller.
You think the "stagflation" of three decades ago was bad? Just wait - you ain't seen nuthin' yet!

It won't matter who is elected. It's coming, and the pain cannot be put off forever. If a Republican is elected, he'll be blamed, and short-sighted statistics such as you cite will be trotted out by the economically ignorant as "proof". If Obama is elected, then they'll probably talk about how "He tried, and almost succeeded, but the problems he inherited were too big..."
Obama defenders will keep his image clean in their minds.

But the fact remains, in deferring the pain, he has made it ultimately worse. It's like putting wallpaper over a rotting, mold-infested wall. It will look nice and new and pretty for a while... but when the mold eventually rots its way through, there will be an even bigger layer of gunk to scrape through, with uglier decay behind it.

Politicians never want to "stink", so they tend to want to "inflate their way out of trouble". Both Republicans and Democrats have done this in a much smaller scale, leading up to election times, for decades. They try to get the populace to "feel good" in a period of apparent "prosperity", and people fall for it, because they don't understand how economics really works. The problem is, every time they do this and keep things rolling forward, things ultimately get worse, like snowball that grows as it rolls. Obama didn't do this to look good for an election; he had to, to keep (both himself and us) getting crushed by the snowball. The problem is that he just made the snowball much bigger than it has ever been, and it's still rolling.

It's kind of a sad time to be young, or poor... because it isn't going to be easy to do well in the coming years, before the piper has been paid and balance can once again be restored (until the next idiot swings the pendulum too far the other way...). The snowball is going to bury us, and it will take a long time to melt one that big and see sunshine again. We are going to see a LOT of unhappy people in the years to come, and they'll want to point fingers. Let's make sure the fingers end up pointed in the right directions, at least.

[finnbow]

Originally Posted by Arkay

Have you looked at inflationary trends recently? At the value of the US$ against world currencies?

U.S. inflation rates are very low now and have been for quite a while.
http://inflationdata.com/inflation/i...tinflation.asp

Also, the dollar's value has increased ~10% vs. the Euro in the past several months.
http://www.x-rates.com/d/USD/EUR/graph120.html

As sclerotic as our economy may be, it may indeed be the strongest in the developed world at the moment, notwithstanding Congressional malfeasance/incompetence.

[whell]

Finn - to suggest that the dollar is gaining against the Euro seems kinda like saying that the dog catcher is going to get re-elected because he's running unopposed.

[merrylander]

Here all this time I thought it was the Fed who printed the money, was this not Ron Paul's big complaint.