SilverLib

Author: markhu

  • 6 Months With Android

    I bought my current Android phone 6 months ago: it was the first day of the debut of the HTC EVO 4G with Sprint. Overall, my experience with the phone, service, and operating system has been positive. There are a few nits, mostly minor. Let’s get those out of the way.
    1. battery life: this is probably the most bothersome, since it often needs a charge mid-day. My collection of micro-USB cables is expanding so I can tap into any USB power.
    2. screen brightness: it is both too bright at night, as well as too dim outdoors on a sunny day.
    3. sound quality/call volume. Often the callers voice seems too loud, even when the volume is adjusted to minimum. I wouldn’t mind loud, but the crackling of something being over-driven bothers me. More rarely, the reverse where it sounds too quiet on BlueTooth, even though volume was at max.
    4. OS stability: Only a few times has it locked up causing me to manually reboot it. I suppose I should be thankful it doesn’t hang mor often, the trade-off being that it spontaneous reboots which happen about once a month, and usually while sitting idle.
    5. default MP3 audio user interface: hard to navigate to a precise position in a large file. The old iPod had this perfect with its “wheel” interface. Am I the only one who listen’s to hour-long podcasts, and sometimes likes to “rewind” 30 seconds?
    6. paid-for 2 apps that address shortcomings: Taskiller Full, More Icons Widget

    The good:

    1. YouTube videos on demand, streaming audio
    2. unlimited web bandwidth and texting
    3. mobile gMail
    4. web browsing so good I’m starting to neglect the home computer
    5. played some fun games in the first few months, but I’m not into that much. paid for Archipelago and Space Physics.
    6. neat free apps that address shortcomings: Timeriffic
    7. large removable storage (8 gig microSDram came with)
    8. reading Kindle books

  • More Details About Investing With Gold And Silver

    As you can tell, my interest in this blog is two-fold: understanding economic principles, learning how Silver can help stabilize my portfolio. Nay, a third: preparing for hard times (or preventing them, depending on outlook.)

    My brief blog posts don’t have time or space to go into all the details, so here are a couple of recommendations I have for more info. These are paid products, but worth it.

    How to Buy Gold And Silver Online

    Food 4 Wealth (preparedness)

    As a special bonus for my readers, I will send you a related MP3 and PDF if you order from one of the links above.

    Thanks.

  • Can we afford Tax cuts? How about spending cuts?

    Some scoff at the idea that the US government could balance the budget without rolling back “the Bush tax cuts.” But not so fast: even IF all 9 major categories of cuts were re-instated (estimated 300 billion dollars worth), that would be a small fraction of the current annual deficit (over 1 trillion dollars), and also less than the interest currently being paid on the national debt.

    Assume there are only three ways to recover: 1. Increase income (taxes), 2. inflation and, 3. reducing spending.

    The three largest categories of spending are (in order) 1. Department of Health and Human Services, 2. Defense, 3. the aforementioned Treasury

    Even aside from the risk of capital flight, tax revenue is a limited finite resource. Inflation is currently being tried, and is risky to the stability of the economy. That leaves reigning in spending. It really is the only way. Reduce entitlements, and reduce involvement in expensive foreign wars.

    Let me elaborate a little on the Estate Tax. Imagine a small sleepy rural town, filled mostly with retirees. “Mostly” in this case is a sort of euphemism, since it could never really be more than 50% since retirees are mainly consumers, therefore need to be surrounded by a younger “staff” to produce goods and services. Now lets simplify as a town of 100 people, say 50 retirees and 50 “young” people. The retirees have on average $2 million a piece in the local banks, while the younger set’s average net worth is negative $100,000 (mostly due to home mortgages.) Now assume that the estate tax is re-instated (it was temporarily repealed in 2010) and now big chunks of money are taxed away out of this small community every time a retiree dies, eventually causing the local banks to be over-leveraged. People talk about WalMart sucking the money out of a town–its nothing like the Federal Government via taxation. Now in the case of my hypothetical community, one could argue that new retirees will move in to replace the dying ones. True, but this doesn’t leave much room for the community capital base to grow, especially since a decimated inheritance is more likely to be split up among [out of state] heirs. Especially if Grampa’s cabin has to be sold to pay the taxes. But if it wasn’t taxed, it might be more likely that one of his heirs would move into it and stay in the community.

  • Buying Silver as Activist Investing for JP Morgan Crash

    According to the National Inflation Association, JP Morgan is “short 30,000 silver contracts representing 150 million ounces of silver. This is one of the largest concentrated short positions in the history of all commodities, representing 31% of all open COMEX silver contracts.” This could leave JP Morgan exposed if people go out and buy physical silver in large numbers.

    Mike Krieger and Max Keiser have an idea for attacking the weak underbelly of the seemingly invincible too big to fail banks and market manipulators … all at the same time.

    Specifically, they say that if everyone buys just 1 ounce of silver, it will force JP Morgan – a giant manipulator of the silver market – to cover its short positions, and drive it out of business.

    Explanation of how silver buys might hurt JP Morgan Chase
    :     http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/11/crash-jp-morgan-buy-silver-show-too-big.html

  • War On The Middle Class

    If the estate tax is re-instated, then Obama’s administration will have presided over the single largest tax hike in the histiry of the U.S.

    If you don’t think too hard about it (presuming you are a young whelp not knowing any better), a tax on anything over $1,000,000 (that’s one million dollars) sound like reasonable redistribution from the “rich” to, um, “society.” But to many retirees who bought houses in the 1960’s for $30,000 and have saved up consistently since then, a million dollar estate is common. Divide that by a few kids, and each of them by a few grandkids, and you tell me: Wouldn’t letting the heirs keep “all” of their share of that money stimulate the economy quite meaningfully?

    Just like corporate taxes and regulations, only the largest can afford the specialist accountants and lawyers to defend them. Meanwhile, the middle class gets routinely decimated.

    references:

    http://www.frumforum.com/the-tax-that-started-the-tea-party (and my comment)

    http://www.physiciansnews.com/finance/405.html

    http://wills.about.com/od/understandingestatetaxes/a/estatetaxchart.htm

    http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/taxes/2010-07-21-estatetax21_CV_N.htm