No, Russia would still most likely have kicked Hitler's butt. Are you seriously equating the danger to the world of Isis, which even the biggest estimate has under 200k fighters with (at best) a few tanks and planes but mostly small arms and crap like technicals, to the the Wehrmacht, which numbered...

But they can only chop off my head or my family's heads if I take them to Syria. If they are going to attack Rome, why should the US military solve it? Why not Italy's? By the way, the Saudi government regularly beheads people as well.  Why aren't Inhofe or McCain or any of you pushing to invade the...

The ultimate "oh shit" scenario that could prove this mind-set wrong would be a nuke going off in Manhattan or something. From what I have seen on the subject Al Qaeda did not get as close as Aum Shinrikyo to getting nukes, which didn't get very far. Apparently Al Qaeda was scammed a few ...

It really is interesting how differently some of us see the world.  E.g. I read http://reason.com/archives/2011/09/06/h ... ism-should and it seems to me the concern some folks have with terrorism seems extremely overblown.

And as I initially wrote, I don't think this creates very many D- voters out of R-voters.  But I do think it would result in some R-leaning undecideds staying home or voting third party. People like madbean, for example. Add me to the list.  My general criteria for 2016 is "anyone but a Bush o...

After reading the original remarks (thanks TennPaGa) I have to say that the "rope a dope" theory seems pretty good. Jindal seems to be reacting exactly as Obama would hope - saying things that will please the conservative wing of the party, but won't help him in the general. I don't like O...

So I went though and read the old thread and this one.  It seems like as long as you don't use highly acidic foods in cast iron, and don't allow your pan to get rusty, and don't have some sort of blood disorder, that cast iron pans are perfectly good to use (and certainly better than anything that h...

Nice web page find there! I particularly like it when I can extract a whole table of prices rather than one by one. I suspect Google spreadsheets run out of steam when you give them too many URLs to retrieve.

Someone messaged me about a way to get accurate offer prices for physical gold coins for valuing the physical part of the gold in their PP.  Apmex posts buy prices on their web pages if you know where to look, so I put together an example that shows examples of how scrape those values into a Google ...

Dualstow pretty much nailed what I do.  The only difference is I lay out the cells like this: 02/15/2039 30 Year Treasury    | $1,216.17 05/15/2039 30 Year Treasury    | $1,357.89 The first (A) column is a text description of the bond - nice and readable The second (B) column has the following formu...

It is still being flaky

I even started a new spreadsheet entirely to see if it would be more robust. At first it was more robust, but pretty quickly it had an error again too.

Why can't a free solution work perfectly!!! Geeze Google.

I view IBonds as shallow cash once they are 12 months old.  With paper ones I can walk into any bank and redeem them for cash on the spot.  With electronic ones I can use TreasuryDirect and just need to wait for the ACH to clear.  WRT laddering, it seems to me a lot of work to do quarterly buys for ...

Has anybody looked at VSGDX as a replacement for SHY? 

ER: 0.10% vs. 0.15%
Yield: 0.7% vs. 0.36%
Avg. duration: 2.2y vs. 1.83y

Seems like VSGDX is only slightly longer duration, but significantly better yield and slightly better ER.  Thoughts?

The URL and cell calculation code is all still correct.  I changed from http:// to https:// and it worked once then stopped working. It looks like some sort of intermittent problem rather than a problem in the code itself. Perhaps give it a week or two (I suspect the folks who maintain the TreasuryD...

Looking at it now, thanks for the heads up.

WIW and WIA both invest up to 40% of their funds in non-US gov't stuff.  WIW even invests in stuff that is below investment grade.  As such, these seem to be more appropriate for the VP than the PP.

As long as we have government funded healthcare (medicare, medicaid), then please please please give us death panels.  Government funded healthcare must be rationed, otherwise it will bankrupt the state.  I am still shocked that so many people don't get the need for rationing of any good (healthcare...

Yes, Sprott could easily stray from his prospectus.  Anyone can. The main argument for choosing Sprott over an ETF is that Sprott has a good reputation and has never been convicted of fraud.  The banks that are the custodians for the gold ETFs, on the other hand, have all recently been convicted of...

That is, in the current environment, one would expect gold prices to be rising, and yet they aren't.  Why not? Negative real interest rates have historically been present when the central banks are trying to use monetary policy to offset an economic dislocation (recession).  Investor psychology at ...

Here is the direct one for PSLV - the same criticisms apply to PHYS: http://kiddynamitesworld.com/facts-the-enemy-of-the-precious-metals-blogger/ Let's start with a some simple items. First, the list of gold bars: GLD has a list of their holdings online. The list comes from HSBC (a third party), is ...

Have you read the GLD prospectus? I have read a bunch of it and it scares the daylights out of me. Assuming that they follow its terms to the letter, they could have a vault filled with marshmallows instead of gold and they would not be liable. Compare the GLD and PHYS (or SLV and PSLV) prospectus....

I would take that article with a grain of salt.  The author of the article is under the assumption that the ETFs operate exactly as they are supposed to. The exact same skepticism should be applied to Sprott's funds.  Either you assume that all trusts and ETFs follow the law & their trust docum...

Before getting too committed to PHYS or any Sprott offering, I suggest reading the following article. If anything, some of the more well known funds like GLD are actually more transparent and reliable than PHYS: http://kiddynamitesworld.com/when-your-precious-metals-blogger-doesnt-understand-how-etf...

I just looked at the price for the 02/15/2039 treasury. Here's what I found: Vanguard: $95.781 WSJ: $95.789 TreasuryWiki: $97.64 PRICE(): $93.804 Fidelity: $95.671 At least for 02/15/3029, I find WSJ/Vanguard/Fidelity are all pretty close to each other, with TreasuryWiki being 2% high and PRICE() be...

Seems as safe as very short term T-Bills (4 week, etc.)

Most likely the yields will be similarly low.  Watch out as they may go negative on auction, in which case it is better to stay in the 0% cash account TreasuryDirect offers.