jenius

Well we're not supposed to get political. I can say that all politicians, not just the two at the top, share their fraction of a percentage for not being able to see the writing on the wall. The various lobbyists had everyone convinced that this wouldn't happen because they would always play it safe enough to survive... in the end we all saw that they were way too confident and everyone was suckers for believing them. There are plenty of reasons to blame Bush for the way money was spent and such but this problem was way too insidious to say its his fault... it's his fault, the congress' fault, the house's fault, Wall Street's fault, the bank's faults, the rating agency's faults, the lenders' faults, the borrowers' faults, etc. etc.

I have the New Gen I-Men

Where did the money go? Here's a real simple example of how it simply vanished... Bank 1 buys $100Billion in Mortgage backed Securities. These securities pay the bank 7% per annum and have a market value of $120BIL if split up and sold 8 ways of Sunday (all just hypothetical stuff here). Bank 1 goes to Bank 2 and pledges that $100BIL MBS for a $100BIL Line of credit. Bank 2 makes 5% plus a ton of fees loaning $200BIL to Bank 1. Joe Blow can't pay his mortgage... neither can roughly 10% of the people in the security. The Security is no longer profitable. The agency rating that originally said the MBS was as safe as government paper now sees their valuation model is wrong. They warn that their ratings on MBSs are now entirely suspect. The market for MBSs vanishes. MBSs are affectively worthless in the eyes of Wall Street and thus worthless as collateral on debt obligations. Bank 2 sees that the best Bank 1 can do is fire sale their MBS to some schmuck investor (who isn't really a smuck since there's still 90% of MBS people paying their mortgages) for $50BIL. Bank 2 calls Bank 1 and says "Your collateral is only worth $50BIL by our calculations. Please repay us $50BIL today. Oh yeah, and since the market is heading down, we won't renew your line of credit in six months so even if you have $50BIL to keep you alive now, you better have another $50BIL to give us again in six months so we can get out of this relationship." Bank 1 says "We don't have $100BIL lying around, we used it to buy MBSs and now there's no market for them." Bank 1 goes bankrupt. Bank 2 receives a $50BIL MBS and lots of other MBSs in repayment of the $100BIL line of credit it had. Unfortunately, those aren't cash, and people are calling Bank 2 to repay their debts since Bank 2 also was using MBSs as collateral. Bank 2 goes bankrupt. The vicious cycle continues until you reach a bank that either held only MBSs backed by the government (as there's still an active market for them) or a bank that had enough cash on hand to wait out the MBSs and survive on the monthly remittance of borrowers. The perceived value of a security vanished, so did it's value as collateral, that freaked out everyone, everyone called their debts due, no one could repay them 'cause they were all in the same boat, and that's how you get where were at.

The economy naturally jumps up and then falls down. Every single time there's a new reason why it speeds up and a new reason why it slows down. Every single time we learn from our mistake only to learn a new way to (essentially) repeat it. The policies put in place by institutions like the US' Fed are simply meant to slow down the economy when it's speeding up unsustainably and then to speed it up when it starts slowing (reduce the height of the peak and the valley). It's because of these natural cycles and our ability to (when things aren't completely FUBAR) influence these cycles (and/or severity) that makes economists so important. When Wall Street gets into excessive gambling there isn't much the world can do about it so long as Wall Street keeps winning. Maybe now that the current crunch is happening the government will be able to stay a step ahead of Wall Street for a while but when there are such huge rewards that can be reaped from gambling the incentive is always too high and the world's most brilliant minds will always come up with ways to get beyond government control and engage in huge risks for what are deemed even more huge returns. Pull through this, hope for the best, and then don't be shocked when the next downturn comes. Don't get crazy though, this is a natural cycle. Don't hide your money in a box. Don't fall for conspiracy theories. Don't start blaming immigrants for taking jobs. Hard times call for an excess of rational thought, not a dearth of it. (None of this is directed at anyone in particular).

I am so happy I don't collect DYRL specific schemes

At this point, the Regult and the Glaug absolutely have to be on an itinerary somewhere. My destroids are itching for someone to pick a fight with!

The line art presented there (really cool with the cut-away showing the mechanical stuff inside) was also present on various toy and model kits. Just the other day I was looking at my Robotech release of the 1/55 triple change Alpha and admiring that same art.

The price is definitely ridiculously expensive for the scale and the parts-formation. I may not get any VF-25 variants after the Alto.

I have no specific word from Beagle or a third party who spoke to Beagle that this is a prototype but I can say from experience watching these things like a hawk that the overwhelming odds are that it's a "pre-production" sample. Remember, Overdrive did a piece with the original Stick prototype about a month before it was due out (after one delay) and the actual production version was slightly different. There was only a one month lead time there and there's a three month lead time here. It doesn't mean that they actually will make changes but it definitely seems unlikely that this came from a production run. So, you may very well be right, but my observation is based on the history of this toy manufacturer (and others). Only time will tell, there is still pleny of room for hope. By all means though, don't preorder if you're concerned... Stick's is still readily available and Ray's will probably move slower so you have plenty of time to wait for reviews.

One thing I don't get, why the DYRL SDF-1? Is it because it's the one that gets shown ever after the movie was released? I personally would prefer to have the aircraft carriers. I wonder if this reflects my introduction to Macross through Robotech. If they announce a TV version right before they put out the DYRL version I might have to just hold off until that TV one comes out. Hopefully they don't pull the WAVE stunt of milking the mold by releasing an "almost" paint scheme first and following it up six months or a year later with a "movie color" version.

LOL, Hurin still sucks but you have to admire the power of SDF-1 toys, they're like the bright light of a porch lamp to his moth. Maybe Hurin can tell us whether or not it will have knees (Hurin, please feel free to add a link here to when you made an ass out of yourself over the SDF-1 having knees). I'm definitely excited about both the Quarter and the SDF-1 but I think I'll buy the Quarter, put it in some cool poses, and probably sell it later to make room for valks. The SDF-1 will be purchased and kept until it absolutely has to move.

I think you guys are a bit premature on any criticism to Beagle for not improving the Ray version. The toy isn't due out until some time in May, that's plenty of time to make some tweaks. Sure, maybe the initial prototype may be just a Stig version of the toy with a gun instead of missiles but this doesn't tell us definitively that the final product will be that way.

One positive note on credit cards. I buy everything on a credit card and pay the card off every month. I get approximately 2% back on my credit card purchases in either money or travel rewards. So, I never pay a dime of interest and about once a year I get a free vacation (well, flight and maybe hotel). I also get a company on my side if I feel a vendor or merchant screwed me over. So, yeah, 99% of people out there should think of credit cards as the devil. If you're really up on how to use them though, things can work out pretty nice.

Did they actually say a projected price or has it all been speculation?

Ah, I see. Interesting... but an easy thing to pass on (thank God).

Why do you guys think Alto is an action figure? He's on the same base as all those static little statuettes.

I didn't want to get into this... I'm happy to tell you you're wrong and that's not how it happened. There's some truth to that but it's not really related to the FDIC or the good your money does in a bank. To be fair to them, they didn't leach off the system. They took advantage of what was offered them. The fact they were offered these things involved poor decisions by credit analysts, rating agencies, wall street firms, banks, and the government (and this involves many governments). Very, very few people took advantage of these programs thinking "This will be great, I'll get a house for a while and then I won't be able to afford it so I'll live in it for free until they kick me out." Most people thought they'd make ends meet... and usually they didn't understand what they were getting themselves into, but there was no leaching malice involved (again, for the most part). Believe me, in general the person being foreclosed on hates this situation far more than you hate the notion that $10K of your money will go to reviving the economy. Speaking of that, nobody ever realizes how rich these years made them. The economy ballooned well beyond where it should have been so you benefited from all sorts of government projects and increased private industry services (heck, even some of your pay raises may have been based on how "well" your company appeared to be doing) so now that the piper is calling you should really think that you're just repaying the excess that you gained from a busted system (and I'm aware almost no one will do this). A word to the wise, calling any science "completely useless" normally just makes you look ignorant. While it's true that some economists are better than others, and economics is a soft science that can often be interpreted a few ways, macroeconomic theory is going to be VITAL in resurrecting any semblance of a functional world economy. The people tapped to do things like create stimulus packages have studied depressions, recessions, and macroeconomic theory and they are BETTER for having done that then say, your local barber. Basically everything you said from savings to spendings after that is wrong. We're in an era that needs responsible lending and having wealth that's not gaining so much as a 1% interest rate is just a means of throwing free money away. There's almost a level of religious fear being imputed into a discussion about cash. It's okay everyone... it's okay. An economist is a person. There are a number of people on these forums that work in financial sectors who are far more qualified to discuss the value of economists than various other people on this forum. Spouting nonsense about "macroeconomic theory is shize" or "Economists are evil" is just supporting ignorance and it's not a conversation that even needs to be had in the first place. Polite? The post that says "You're an economist, well pardon me but the world woudl be better without you" wasn't very polite... even if he did beg the pardon. It also didn't have much to do with how the economy was affecting his collecting habit. I dont' think I've ever met an economist who said he was engaged in a Hard Science. If models had ZERO to tell us they woudn't exist. Every model is viewed context, they're understood not to be finite, and more than a little deduction is involved. As is too often the case there are people who don't have a full grasp of what happened to get us here and so they lash out at what they don't understand. It was a very unfortunate set of events involving a huge number of short-sighted people in a huge number of industries. Many economists, for a very long time were waving flags saying "this isn't sustainable" so try to cut them some slack.

Release date is some time in May... complete guess here but I'd bet that'd put Houquet right around December.

I forgot to put a link, there are like 10 pictures here

Overdrive just sent me some pics of Ray's Ride Armor -

YES!!! I love the Internet. It introduces me to some very... uh... interesting opinions. I get the feeling this definitely falls under that politics/religion/taboo subjects type thing. Way to take an otherwise decent conversation and railroad it.

On the topic of civilian law enforcement, my GF is also in that industry. While you're right, it's certainly stable, all sorts of local governments have hiring freezes right now. My girlfriend was promoted and then told she'd have her spot after the hiring freeze cleared and now has found out that the spot she was to get has been eliminated. So, while she's got no fear of losing her current job, it sucks that she's not going up any time soon. Putting your money in a box is crazy if you live in the US. For one, it will make you paranoid way more often and two, your money is insured at a bank... even one that goes under. The economy needs your cash in banks right now anyway so you could do your part to help and there's no risk to you.

CAD on its own is one thing, it needs to be joined with computer-assisted manufacturing to get the whole effect and even then, on anything of sufficient complexity, tightness of fit issues won't be completely eliminated.

I had actually been considering scrounging up some cash and buying a house about eight months ago... any thought of doing that is now tossed out the window. I've seen lots of companies we do business with disappear so now, even though my company seems completely fine, I'm going to play it safe for at least another year and just try to accumulate a very large down payment (or, should everything go upside down, some money to live off of for a while). My girlfriend is quitting her job later this year and she's really concerned about how difficult it might be to find somewhere new to work so that sucks. As for the toys, I'm still buying them but I'm definitely avoiding buying variants for the sake of different paint jobs. I won't be getting a CF-1J, TV-1A, etc etc. I elected not to purchase a Weathering 1S or the 1/48 Kakizake 1A TV. I had to sell off a bunch of toys last year for space reasons, if I do go unemployed I certainly have a few items I wouldn't mind selling to try to scrape some extra cash together. As it is, I'm hoping to hold onto everything until times get better so those toys I don't feel I really need right now can at least be sold without taking a HUGE loss.

So, maybe I'm a little bit late on this... but I just put a post up on the 25th anniversary toys on my site. I also started posting much larger pics because it seems like "your pics are too small" was the number one complaint I was getting. Check it out: Also, Save I think I stole your pics from this thread (or another one) to show what the original 25th anniversary scheme looked like.