wrote

It's all political name calling at this point but
*http://bigpicture.typepad.com/commen...tory-exem.html
is interesting.


That *is* interesting, thanks.

(brief quote)
"...the events of the past year are not a mere accident, but are the
results of a conscious and willful SEC decision to allow these firms
to legally violate existing net capital rules that, in the past 30
years, had limited broker dealers debt-to-net capital ratio to 12-
to-1.
...... the five that received this special exemption? You won't be
surprised to learn that they were Goldman, Merrill, Lehman, Bear
Stearns, and Morgan Stanley. " (end quote)

I dunno if it's the same with fiscal regulations as it is with
environmental & safety regs, but federal agencies handing out 'get-out-
of-jail-free' cards defeats the whole purpose of regulation. Why
didn't the competing companies call foul, and why didn't our
supposedly free press get the word out? Betcha this was not mentioned
in any of the five's report to their stockholders, either.


To put a sailing bent on it my plan is to go cruising in the
developing world; a place where everyone understands that most folks
are broke.


Good thinking.

I lost enthusiasm for piddling around in the tribal areas, myself...
not as afraid of being knocked on the head as I am of picking up
intestinal parasites or malaria or something. Besides, it's easy to
go to someplace along the swampy south-east US coast where there
aren't any people at all.

As for good boat bargains, the window of opportunity may be rather
short, since the time frame between sellers needing cash deciding to
unload cheap, and sellers needing cash deciding to simply duck out
from under and letting the boat go to pot, may be short

An awful lot of the boats I saw destroyed in pics of Hurricane Ike's
aftermath were obviously not taken care of. Case in point- I would not
buy a boat from the sort of owner who left a roller-furler jib in
place with a hurricane imminent, no matter how good a deal it is. You
just don't know what other sorts of dumbass things he's done with/to
the boat, and those kinds of surprises are usually unpleasant.

Fresh Breezes- Doug King