dutchman's Comments (8346)

“I share your belly laugh!!!

Hope you're well, my friend.”

“Another great post!!

Gotta go back to playing host. See you next year, dear friend.

Peter”

“Excellent post, LTTL!!!

Glad we overlapped, even for a just a second.

Have a very happy New Year! I hope it's better for you than 2009 was in every possible way.

Dutchman”

“Okay all, guests have arrived - gotta go for now. I'll try and make a guest appearance tomorrow, but in the meantime, I hope everyone finishes the year in grand style!

Dutchman”

“No document interests me more than that one.”

“Hey - did you ever explain the mortgage market? I've been on pins and needles since our last exchange.”

“To all:

Alas, I can only stay for a bit. With house guests arriving any minute, my time on HP will be way too limited until next year.

And so, to that end, allow me to take the opportunity to right now wish all of my friends here at HP a 2010 that is better than 2009 in every way possible.

This last year reminds me of Arlo Gurthie's great saying, "You can't have a light without a dark to put it in".

Well, as dark as this last year was, it was made better by you all. To anyone who took the time to post comments written to promote debate, new thinking or potential solutions to our myriad problems, I say thank you, and please keep it up in 2010. And to those who offered their support to me when it was needed, I say thank you, and I hope that I can return the favor. Finally, to those of you who come here to dissemble, insult or in engage in empty propaganda, I say, "can you please find another site?".

But to all, I wish a Happy New Year.”

“It is now that I see all the a-listers here at HP!!!

Too bad I can only stay for a little bit....”

“Behind closed doors, integrity dles.”

“Excellent.....”

“Good morning to all of you!!!”

“I will be!!”

“I have a book recommendation for all of you:

It's called "Fooled By Randomness", by Nassim Taleb. This guy does an amazing job of pointing out how people consistently misunderstand probability and the role that it plays in your life. It's kind of written for finance types, but trust me when I tell you it's a great read.

As an example of how oddly we treat risk, consider how many American (civilians anyway) have dled from terrorism. Turns out that t's a lot fewer than the number of Americans kllled by moose collisions over the years.

And what's striking is that we spend literally trillions flighting "terror", and virtually mothing on Moose Collision abatement.

And to make things even worse, the bulk of the trillions of dollars we are spending are merely creating more enemies for us to flight.

If anyone still believes that as a species we are somehow inherently rational, this should be proof enough to the contrary.

And with that, I bid you all a fine morning, day, evening, happy new year.

Dutchman”

“Very well said. Extremely so, in fact.

Did you see my response to your earlier question to me?”

“Well, I just booked a flight from Amsterdam to Boston for late January.

I still have to fly. And I'm not going to jurks change how I live.”

“One of your best!!!”

“~~blushes~~”

“Drive carefully!”

“OT is right. Things are no longer unraveling as they were a year ago. For that we need to be grateful. Now, that's not to say that there still isn't a long recovery in front of us, or that Obama doesn't have a lot of work to do, but I would not want to turn back the clock to last year at this time.”

“Awesome!!!”

“Well, that and the incompetence.”

“Stopping all those bad things we've been doing is the best place to start.

The Vietnaamese are huge fans of America now.

The Dutch and the Germans get along

So do the French and the English (well, mostly).

Remove the source of pain helps a lot.

Now, I don't underestimate how hard it is or how long it will take. But luckily history is full of examples of people used to doing terrible things to each other making amends.”

“Stopping all those bad things we've been doing is the best place to start.

The Vietnamese are huge fans of America now.

The Dutch and the Germans get along

So do the French and the English (well, mostly).

Remove the source of pain helps a lot.

Now, I don't underestimate how hard it is or how long it will take. But luckily history is full of examples of people used to doing terrible things to each other making amends.”

“LOL!! Thanks for playing your part....”

“Keep telling yourself that. You're already our poster child for willful reasoning.”