Macroeconomics and Your Money April 8, 2003March 25, 2012 In reponse to yesterday’s column, Dr. Jim A. writes: “You are getting way too political. Get back to investing and money management issues, which I thought was the purpose of the website.” The purpose of the website is anybody’s guess, but the purpose of yesterday’s column (which I was thinking of making more explicit today even before receiving Jim’s e-mail) was to say, in effect . . . Look. It’s great the war is going relatively well. (There is much to criticize about how we got into this war; but anyone would have to admit it could have gone much worse than it has so far, and we are all grateful for that.) But when we win it and the market jumps, as it may, don’t get suckered into thinking the good old days are back. The market, in my view, is not cheap here, and the economic prospects are not terribly good. I hope I’m wrong. But massive budget deficits of the type described yesterday are not the stuff of long-term prosperity. (Modest budget deficits, that grow the national debt at a slower rate than the economy as a whole, are not necessarily bad. So long as the debt grows more slowly than GDP, it shrinks relative to the economy as a whole.) So the outlook for the stock market over the next few years is not terribly bright, either.
Red, White, and Broke Keep Your Eye on the $160 Billion April 7, 2003February 23, 2017 The budget deficit this year will be close to $600 billion, handily outpacing – indeed, about doubling – the prior record, set by Bush 41. Take a minute to think about this. (It adds about $5,000 in national debt for each American household, plus whatever new debt your household took on all by itself.) Take a minute, also, to consider that we are not in the depths of unprecedented recession – the sort of economy in which you might be comfortable running a big deficit in order to stimulate the economy. The 5.8% unemployment rate, while near the peak of the last Bush administration, is nothing like the 10% of the early Seventies, let alone the 25% rate of the You Know What. Take a final minute to see if there may be a pattern here. During Reagan/Bush, we slashed taxes on the wealthy even as we were ramping up the military, and added $3 trillion to our National Debt, doubling two centuries of accumulated debt in just 12 years. Under Bush/Cheney, we are doing it again – only bigger. The reasons you haven’t seen this $600 billion number are: the Administration has not yet added in the $75 billion-plus cost of the Iraq war, and the Administration treats this year’s $160 billion Social Security surplus – the surplus that was to be left untouched in a conceptual ‘lock box’ to help finance Baby Boom retirement – as if it were tax revenue to be spent now rather than saved for your retirement. (As a practical matter, the way we’d ‘save’ $160 billion a year is by using it to pay down our National Debt, so that in the decades when we needed to, we could build it back up.) Add those two numbers to the published deficit estimates you’ve been reading, and you get pretty close to $600 billion. The problem: it’s likely to get worse. The tax cuts for our wealthiest taxpayers have only begun to phase in. And now the Bush Administration is pushing for more. It’s not impossible to imagine trillion-dollar annual deficits. This is a deeply discouraging prospect that fundamentally threatens our economy. It also threatens the Social Security and Medicare benefits most baby boomers are counting on to supplement their retirement savings. And it is so unnecessary. Why not just freeze tax cuts for the best off right here? The top 1% is already getting about $10,000 a year from the cuts passed so far, about ten times what the average tax-payer gets. Keep phasing in the cuts that apply to the bottom 97% or 98% or 99% of the people – which also benefit the top 1% – but torpedo any further tax relief for the best off. As I’ve asked before, what will Dick Cheney do with the extra $327,000 a year the Bloomberg News Service estimates he will save? Buy an extra ten US-made automobiles every year? Yet the cuts keep coming. The Wall Street Journal looked at the Congressional Budget Office analysis of the Bush budget last week and reported: Bush’s Tax Plan Won’t Boost Economy, CBO Analysis Finds By a WALL STREET JOURNAL Staff Reporter WASHINGTON — The Congressional Budget Office said that President Bush’s tax and spending proposals will do far less to spur economic growth in coming years than the White House suggests — and might not provide any kick at all. So why are we doing this? Why are we closing down after-school programs for kids and running up massive deficits . . . to cut taxes on the rich? This is more than an academic question. This is going to affect how you and I and our kids live in the years to come. Last thought: Retirement looms for the baby-boomers. The year 2008 is more or less the start of that tidal wave. So it is prudent for them individually – and for us as a nation – to set money aside for the decades to come, unless we want old homeless people starving in the streets. We save individually by contributing to our retirement plans; we as a nation ought to do it by contributing $160 billion a year in surplus FICA taxes to the conceptual ‘lock box.’ Except that the Bush Administration has decided to take that $160 billion and use it to cut taxes on folks earning half a million or a million or ten million or more a year. Imagine how you would feel if your employer took the money it deducted from your paycheck for your pension plan and counted it as current revenue to be paid out in dividends to your wealthy shareholders. That’s what the Bush Administration is doing when it doesn’t include this $160 billion in its estimate of the deficit, and uses it instead to help justify the big tax cuts for the best off. Remember the final years of Clinton/Gore and the budget surpluses? The constant refrain those last couple of years was, ‘Don’t Squander the Surplus; Save Social Security First.’ That’s what the 2000 election was largely about. I’m not sure how many voters really understood. For more on our budget mess, click here. It does not bode well for our economy or the stock market. Red, white, and broke.
Dinky Winky April 4, 2003February 23, 2017 But first . . . . . . from Bob Herbert’s column in yesterday’s New York Times: ‘The House plan [opposed by the Democrats] offers the well-to-do $1.4 trillion in tax cuts, while demanding billions of dollars in cuts from programs that provide food stamps, school lunches, health care for the poor and the disabled, temporary assistance to needy families – even veterans’ benefits and student loans . . . The cut in Medicaid, if achieved entirely by reducing the number of children covered, would lead to the elimination of health coverage for 13.6 million children . . .’ ☞ It is a grand time to be rich and powerful in America. Click here for the whole column. And now . . . John Seiffer: ‘Check out dinkytown.net for mortgage and other calculations. I forgot where I got this; if it came from you, my apologies.’ ☞ Yes, you got it here February 19. But I started to play around with it a little and noticed a pretty glaring flaw in at least one of its calculators. Its 1040 Tax Calculator treats capital gains no differently from ordinary income. That’s such a huge and basic mistake, it makes we want to check everything else on the site before trusting it. I reported the error and got a prompt response that, well, it was going to stay the way it was: ‘As you know,’ writes the author, ‘capital gains are a difficult area, due to the wide variety of tax rates depending on the holding period (less than one year, one to five years, over five years if the asset was purchased after January 1, 2001, over five years if the asset was purchased before January 1, 2001). In our calculator, which is used to give you an estimate of your tax liability, we decided to use the worst case scenario assuming that capital gains are all short term capital gains. This type of gain is taxed at your nominal tax rate, regardless of the amount. The amount of information required to calculate your actual capital gains tax was beyond the scope of the 1040 tax estimator, which was targeted to estimate taxes for the more typical taxpayer, many of which have little or no capital gains and the vast majority of which have almost all of their income from employment of one kind or another. I hope this clears up your question! I will be adding additional information to the definitions section of our calculator to let people know our assumptions regarding capital gain taxes.’ ☞ Well, okay, I guess . . . But why include a line for capital gains in the first place if you’re not going to treat it the way most people would expect? Why not just rename that line long-term capital gains? Then you could say, in the definition, ‘We assume that any long-term gains you enter are taxed at the 20% rate, as most are, although for low-income taxpayers the rate can be 10%, and for assets held more than five years, the rate can be 18% and 8%, respectively.’ I have not checked out the dozens of other calculators on the site. But I would read the accompanying ‘assumptions’ carefully before relying on them. And maybe even check the calculations elsewhere, such as Bill Coppedge’s Handy Real Estate Site. And finally, for the traveler . . . S. N.: ‘I know you often talk about Priceline and BiddingForTravel, but I wanted to let you know about a similar site . . . BetterBidding.com. In addition to Priceline, they help you with Hotwire, as well as deals from other suppliers (there is an ‘Other Deals’ section). Priceline isn’t always the best solution, Hotwire can be better if you want to guarantee that certain amenities are available (like a pool, beach access, shuttle bus, kitchenette, etc). The site is only about two months old. I think it is useful already, and will only get better with time. I would ask you to encourage your readers to post their Hotwire (and Priceline) info there so that the database will continue to grow rapidly. The more information that is available, the better it is for all of us.’
The Hawk at the Village Voice April 3, 2003February 23, 2017 IT’S NOT JUST WHAT WE DO, IT’S HOW WE DO IT Joel M: ‘You and your fellow liberals keep on claiming that big mean George Bush is opposed to the Kyoto Treaty, implying that you virtuous Democrats are in favor of it. What garbage.’ ☞ No, it’s the WAY this, and so much else, was done. If I had to fire you and had 20 minutes to do it, I could do it in such an insensitive way that you came back the next day and gunned down everyone in the office . . . or in a better way that left you angry but unarmed . . . or in a way that left you hurt, upset, somewhat angry and mistrustful, but still allowing of the possibility that I really cared about your concerns and was acting no differently than you probably would have under the same circumstances. The same firing, the same 20 minutes, three very different outcomes. Since January 20, 2001, we seem to have been choosing the first method. I think Clinton/Gore or Gore/Lieberman would have come closer to the third. For an awfully good piece by Gideon Rose that makes this point better than I have (and without resorting to dumb analogies), click here. All that said, it’s worth noting the exceptional effort the administration and military have rightly made so far to minimize civilian casualties in Iraq. That piece of it should make us proud. This is not napalm in Viet Nam. THE HAWK AT THE VILLAGE VOICE And speaking of its not being napalm in Viet Nam, I think this is an important piece for those of us deeply uneasy about – or those flat out against – the war to read. That it comes from Nat Hentoff at the Village Voice gives it extra weight. LYING TO THE WORLD? Jim Karn: ‘The Bush Administration presented documents they knew to be forgeries to the UN to support an argument for war. Think about that for a minute. What more can you say about an administration that would lie to start war?’ ☞ They might have done better presenting Nat Hentoff’s argument instead.
Praying for Bush, A Tooth Lengthening – All That and Andy Rooney April 2, 2003February 23, 2017 From an old hand who knows all the Pentagon players, yesterday: ‘Think of Iraq as scene one, act one – that changing the world’s behavior and attitude towards terrorism won’t be stopping at Iraq’s border. The fact that Syria is acting up so soon [I had asked him about Syria] only means that they are moving their own timetable up. Mid East peace, among other things, depends on Syria and Iran’s giving up their harboring, training and supporting terrorism.’ This appears to be our objective, and it could hardly be more noble or important: Wipe out terrorism, bring freedom and democracy to the Middle East, save ourselves and the world from the chaos and catastrophy of widely dispersed weapons of mass destruction in highly irresponsible, untraceable hands. What dismays a lot of us is that we launched the war with so little backing from even our traditional allies . . . that many we thought would help us or at least stay neutral seem to be causing us difficulty at best, strapping on suicide belts at worst . . . and that we may wind up fighting an endless supply of religious fanatics who are actually eager to die – a very hard fight to win, even if entirely justified. (For a sobering – and I hope exceptionally simple-minded – animation of what we’ve started, click here. You can skip the first couple of screens, which are neither funny nor informative, and then just let the battle unfold. The thing to keep in mind, I think, is that our leaders can be really intelligent and well-intentioned, as President Johnson and Robert McNamara were in the Viet Nam era, and still make judgments that produce terrible results.) If the plan has all along been for Iraq to be ‘act one, scene one,’ were the American people adequately clued into that? I am reminded of the ‘tooth lengthening’ I was counseled to undergo a few years ago. My tooth wouldn’t literally be lengthened; my gum would be cut back, lengthening the exposed area that my dentist had to work with in attaching a crown. A tooth way, way in the back. And as the specialist was getting deeper and deeper into the procedure, which wound up involving a cleaver and tongs and a couple of hammers and an ice pick – and a lot of blood and grunting (his grunting, which alarmed me even more than my own) – I got both scared (‘Verbose Financial Writer Dies in Bizarre Tooth Lengthening Mishap’) and angry. Why hadn’t they told me what I was getting into? I might still have agreed it was necessary, but it would have been more democratic to involve me in the decision. I was paying for it, after all. To all of which gloomy thinking a largely liberal college classmate of mine, who believes in the Bush vision, responds: ‘The citizens of France, 54% to 33%, want the U. S. to win the war. We’ll see how many enemies we have. I think freedom will again win over the fellow-travelers of totalitarianism, and will bring most persons everywhere – even in Arabia – along because it is in their own best interest.’ I totally hope my classmate and the Bush Administration are right. (Even so, I cannot believe a more sensitive diplomacy for the last two years would not have allowed us to proceed with broader support.) But the Holy War part of it gives me special pause. Religious hatreds, once enflamed, are not easily extinguished. Sure we’re the good guys. But if a billion Muslims don’t see it that way, we still have a gigantic problem and will need all the good will we can get – which is why I wish we hadn’t alienated so many people in the cavalier way we killed the Kyoto Protocol and other treaties, backed out of the Mid East and Korean peace processes, and showed contempt for the UN before belatedly deciding to seek its support. For those worried about Holy War – and even about the erosion of the separation of church and state – this item from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation will bring little comfort. (‘US soldiers in Iraq asked to pray for Bush . . . Thousands of marines have been given a pamphlet called ‘A Christian’s Duty,’ a mini prayer book which includes a tear-out section to be mailed to the White House pledging the soldier who sends it in has been praying for Bush.’) All that being said, I think Andy Rooney’s conclusion to this week’s commentary may have said it best: ‘I wish my America had never gotten into this war, but now that we’re in it, I want us to win it.’ Amen.
Your Feedback April 1, 2003January 22, 2017 DENNIS MILLER John Scully (and several others): ‘Friday’s rant is not from Dennis Miller. Check out Snopes.com – a great source for determining if something is true or not.’ ☞ I hate when this happens. Mea culpa. THE MARINE WHO WAS KILLED Peter Yeates: ‘The last link in Friday’s column is broken. Should have been this.’ ☞ Hate when that happens, too. Especially when it was such a poignant link. TIPS Kirk Elliot: ‘Thanks for yesterday’s update. You forgot to gloat about Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) and Merck (MRK) which you recommended July 24 – and I bought – up 34% and 37%, respectively.’ ☞ If only that happened more often. BILL COPPEDGE’S HANDY REAL ESTATE SITE Click here. MISSING MYM Bill Milosh: ‘Please, PLEASE, bring MYM back. Quicken is TERRIBLE! It is full of bugs and miscalculations that are just getting worse with every new version. If MYM were to reappear, people would run to the stores. I know I would. Read the reviews at Amazon.com. I miss my MYM!’ ☞ Oh, me, too! And my royalties! (Well, I don’t miss my MYM because I still use it. But I miss my royalties!) And for those of us still using the DOS version, tomorrow is the day CheckFree is supposed to stop working for us. A sad day! In my own case, I will still use MYM DOS V12 but without CheckFree. I will set up as many bills for auto-pay as possible, and probably do the rest via my on-line Citi account, reentering in MYM. Not the best, but with so many years’ data in MYM, and data entry so easy, it shouldn’t eat more than another few minutes a month. For any of you who never had MYM but wonder what the shouting’s all about – forget it. Finnish is a great language if you’re, well, Finnish. But quite impractical for the rest of us to learn at this late date. So it is with MYM, orphaned nearly a decade ago. Stick with Quicken or MS Money. Ah, but it was a Golden Age . . . especially those royalties. AS TO THE REST Ugh.
TIPS (and Other Tips) A Selective Recap March 31, 2003January 22, 2017 Paul Langley: ‘You are plagiarizing yourself!! The tip you published last week about not having to enter the http://www and .com was originally published in your column on March 8, 2001. I use this tip all the time and I remember I got it from your column so when I saw it again, I checked the archives and sure enough there is was. I hope you aren’t turning into Dear Abby (or was it Ann Landers? I can’t remember, but one of them reran columns without noting they were reruns and caused quite a stir).’ ☞ You mean people actually read these columns? And remember them? I hereby extend your subscription by a full week. Another tip you’ve found here beginning with May 12, 2000, and repeated several times since, was to buy Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities – TIPS. At the time I first suggested them, they yielded 4.25%-above- inflation. Since then, TIPS have more than held their own while the NASDAQ index has fallen more than 60% and the Dow, 23%. Indeed, last March this column suggested the 30-year TIPS yielding 3.375%-above-inflation and selling at 99 cents on the dollar. Today they sell at $1.15, so you are 16% ahead on the price plus a little more than 3% in interest. (Those of you who chose to buy I-Bonds instead, as first discussed May 15, 2000, have also done OK.) So the question naturally arises – what about TIPS now? And my answer is: you could do worse. The risk is a bit greater (the 30-year bonds that have risen to 115 could drop back to 99 or even lower … though I doubt they will, and they would eventually be redeemed for full inflation-adjusted value). And the return is somewhat less (instead of 4.25% or even 3.375% above inflation, the premium they command means that you will get more like 2.5% above inflation). And there is still the nuisance that the inflation adjustment is reported as taxable income each year even though you don’t actually receive it until you sell. Still, TIPS remain a very conservative place – some would say a too conservative place – for, say, a bedrock portion of your retirement plan. (To get a rough idea of what these bonds are selling for on any given day, click here – and scroll down to the very end of the page. Note that where you see something like “115-20” as the price of the bond maturing April 15, 2032, that does not mean the bonds are trading “around 115 to 120.” It means they are trading at around 115 and twenty thirty-seconds. Treasuries have traditionally been quoted in “thirty-seconds” of a dollar. For those of us with fewer than 32 fingers and toes, this has always come unnaturally; but the thing I like about it is that I get to call them “two-nies.” Sixteenths are “teenies.” I can’t imagine this will last much longer, so enjoy it while you can. Let’s face it . . . I’ve been a bit glum in my financial/economic outlook for quite some time now. (Personally, I inherited the happy gene; but that’s a different story.) Some of you may think my bearishness is simply borne of Al Gore’s loss, and I’ll admit that’s part of it. I think the borrow-and-spend, regulators-be-damned Republican stewardship of the economy has been just dazzlingly, breathtakingly bad. (And this is something they were supposed to be good at?) But really long-time readers will recall my urging Dorothy to sell her Amazon.com shares at 400 and at 300 and at 200 and at 100 and at . . . well, you get the picture. Yes, Amazon is a wonderful company – I am still one of its best customers. But stock prices in the late ‘90s became a once-in-a-lifetime bubble and that’s made me a sourpuss in this space for a long time now, happy gene or no. It’s been hard to know where to put our hard-earned dollars (not that it’s ever been easy) – especially if we need some investment income to, say, pay the rent. This past November 25, I again suggested TIPS, but also four stocks: Real estate investment trust BF Saul, BFS, first mentioned here at $16.75 on May 3, 2000. It pays $1.56 dividend and was $23.25 or so November 25, up 38% – which is about where it was again this past Friday. I worry about the real estate market, but it still yields 6.6% and I have held much of mine. Enterprise Production Partners, EPD, then $17.75, now $20.80, up 16% plus a few months of its hefty dividend. Ferrell Gas Partners, FGP, then $20.50, just a few cents higher today, which yields better than 9%. The Templeton Russia Fund TRF, then $19.60, about a dollar higher today. With the Dow down 6% or so since November 25, these have done OK – so far. But there are some serious caveats to stress. First, I’m no expert in any of these securities. Second, I find that when I begin to gloat this way, it is a sign that a well-deserved comeuppance will shortly follow. Third, free advice is generally worth what you pay for it (although that’s a better value than you generally get for paid advice). Fourth, it makes little sense for most people to choose individual stocks – far better, for that portion of your funds which you wish to commit to the stock market at any given time, to go the no-load, low-expense index mutual fund route, at least for most of your stock market money. As for other stocks that I’ve gingerly brought to your attention from time to time, there is the natural tendency for me to forget the ones that did terribly . . . so I ask you to remind me and I will own up to them later this week if you do. One of you, I know, paid $11 a share for BOREF, a stock that I have been telling you from the very beginning is surely going to zero (not least because I own a ton of it). It was trading at around $3 when I first wrote about it and is trading at around $3 today – a virtual blue chip when compared with the Standard & Poor’s 500, down 38% in the same time period. Indeed, it has been trading not far from $3 more or less the full four years except for that one day one of you put in a “market order” – meaning you would pay any price – for 500 shares (or some number like that), this with a stock that sometimes trades no shares at all for a day or two, but which had just then gotten noticed by a potential customer no less august than Boeing. So your elephantine 500-share order, combined with what could easily have been four or five others, drove the stock up to a momentary, glorious, wind-rushing-through-its-hair $11. It was grand. (In future, always use limit orders for thinly traded stocks.) If BOREF some day gets back to $11, I will not sell. As I’ve said all along, this is a wild speculation. I will either sell much, much higher or, far more likely, watch the stock fall to zero. Still – here comes the fate-tempting hubris again – I would like to point out to all you securities analysts and portfolio managers who were earning millions of dollars a year recommending Cisco to your clients at $42 the same day I was being paid nothing to write up BOREF at $3, that BOREF is still $3, while CSCO is $13, down 75%. Now watch me fall down a flight of stairs or something.
Other Voices March 28, 2003February 22, 2017 But first . . . IT’S ALMOST TIME TO FILE YOUR INCOME TAX EXTENSION Oh, sure – lord it over me. You’ve already done your taxes. You’ve already got your refund! Well, that just means you’re too organized. For many of us, April 15 means only one thing: Form 4868, the automatic four-month extension to file. (I can proudly say I have never had to mess with Form 2868, which is the application for yet a second extension, to October 15th, but which the IRS is not so quick to grant.) Of course, the extension to file is not an extension to pay. If you don’t send in enough dough with your extension to cover your tax bill, there will be penalties and interest when you finally do file (so the safe thing to do is overestimate a bit and then just accept a refund of the difference). But for those who need an extension to August 15 – maybe your printer died so you can’t print your tax return, maybe the dog ate your ink cartridge – you can now do it by phone, toll free – 888-796-1074 – provided only that you filed a return for 2001 or 2000. You even get a confirmation number to prove that you made the call. And if you need to send in $$$, that can be done by authorizing the IRS to suck it out of your bank account. (There are ways to pay your tax by credit card, too, but don’t – you’ll typically pay 2.5% extra to do it, not to mention any interest you incur on your balance. The frequent-flier miles are not worth that much.) And now . . . WHY GEORGE SOROS WORRIES ABOUT GEORGE BUSH [‘Removing Mr. Hussein is a good thing, yet the way Mr. Bush is going about it must be condemned. America must play a more constructive role if humanity is to make any progress.’] Click here. WHY A MARINE, OF ALL PEOPLE, AGREES WITH MICHAEL MOORE [‘To be blunt, my personal feeling on the invasion of Iraq is that George W. Bush and his colleagues have instigated an environment of violence and as a result my children will have to grow up in a nation where random acts of terrorism are common place.’] Click here. WHY DENNIS MILLER THINKS IT’S NOT SO COMPLICATED Quoting him, in part (except that it turns out this is NOT Dennis Miller, after all – oops! – but could have been – A.T.): 1) Between President Bush and Saddam Hussein . . . Hussein is the bad guy. 2) If you have faith in the United Nations to do the right thing, keep this in mind: they have Libya heading the committee on human rights and Iraq heading the global disarmament committee. Do your own math here. 3) Saddam and bin Laden will not seek United Nations approval before they try to kill us. 4) Even if you are anti-war, you are still an ‘infidel’ and bin Laden wants you dead, too. If you believe in a ‘vast right-wing conspiracy,’ but not in the danger that Hussein poses, quit hanging out with the Dell Computer dude. 5) We are trying to liberate them. He is trying to kill us. 6) Whether you are for military action or against it, our young men and women overseas are fighting for us to defend our right to speak out. We all need to support them without reservation. Yes, we do. I don’t think anyone is arguing that point. Still, when you contemplate the reservations expressed by George Soros and that ex-Marine, above . . . or when you read stories about young marines like this one . . . you wish there had been another way.
When You Have Nothing Nice to Say March 27, 2003March 25, 2012 I know: come sit by me. But actually, I think it’s better just to take a day off. Back tomorrow . . .
One More Reason Not to Sun-Bathe Naked on Your Roof March 26, 2003February 22, 2017 Several sites of possible interest today. First, no matter your view of the war, you might want to click here to thank the troops. It takes just seconds. Next, to see what the war might cost us, click here. It appears we may all one day own a piece of Iraq. (For this pun to work, you need to pronounce it a-ROCK and be old enough to remember decades of Prudential ads. And, yes, the only form of wit lower than the pun is the pun that needs explanation.) Of course, we won’t literally own a piece of Iraq and don’t want to; we’ll just own a piece of the extra half trillion dollar debt, inasmuch as we are ‘financing’ this war with tax cuts. (I am very sad to see that my super smart, plugged in friend who predicted a five-day cake walk was wrong.) I read the Goering quote that’s been going around the Internet with more of an ache than a feeling it’s a ‘perfect fit’ for the present situation. But thanks to Doug Jones for providing this link to the full story. And now, finally (well, I know what caught your eye – you are human, I am human), comes the bit about naked sunbathing. This is an extraordinary site, skin or no skin. If you’re into real estate investing or just want to see what your house looks like from a few thousand feet up, or what your neighbor pays in real estate tax, or how big his house is . . . or if you just want more reason to feel dazzled by this brave new world . . . or to feel anxious about its loss of privacy . . . check this out. (Thanks, Steve Sapka.)