John T. Reed’s news blog

The subtitle is “Why progressives ruin cities.” That is a better description of the contents than the title. . I like to reduce it to basic principles. . • Liberals are process oriented. • Conservatives are results oriented. • Liberals see good intentions as a 100% substitute for results. • Liberals glom onto theories which are called ideologies. • In the scientific method, theory is an early step. In subsequent steps, the theory is proven or disproven by testing and empirical evidence. Liberals reject empirical evidence or anything else that would disprove the theory. The theory or ideology is king....

Today’s WSJ says NFL player Kyle Van Noy is a skilled real estate rehab flipper. I was going to check if that was true, but the article fails to give enough information. The key fact that is missing is how much did comparable houses that were not rehabbed go up in value during the same period. Probably about the same. . Hardly any rehab is profitable. Van Noy appears to have spent $320K n renovations to three houses. That is less than the difference between the purchase and sale prices in each case. But A. we do not know the...

Today’s WSJ editorialized that raising the FNMA/FHLMC mortgage limit in high-cost markets to near $1million will cause another subprime crisis. What? I read every book on that crisis and saw the movie and speeches and panel discussions including the people involved. . Raising FNMA/FHLMC limits played NO role in the subprime crisis. Here is the history of the limits. https://www.hsh.com/mortgage/a-history-of-conforming-fanniefreddie-loan-limits.html  The subprime crash was in 2009. In the years leading up to that the limit was raised to $417,000 in 2006 and stayed at that amount through 2016. As its name explains, the subprime crisis was caused by making loans...

I have an article condemning uncompetitive football plays because they are boring. By uncompetitive, I mean at least one team is not trying to do anything. Sounds like a soccer penalty kick. . One of my suggestions was adopted in the NFL. I wanted the ball moved back to the 25 for a kicked 1-point PAT. Leave it at the two for 2-pt. PATs. Did they adopt that because of me. I doubt it. . But I wrote the article before they did that. . https://www.johntreed.com/.../boring-football-plays-that... The result was what I predicted. PAT kicks stopped being automatic, a.k.a. uncompetitive and...

Today’s WSJ has an article about retirement. Its main point is the 4% rule is out of date. The new rule is 3.3%. That is the amount of your life savings you should spend during your first year of retirement. In one part of the article, they assume you have 50% of your savings in stocks and 50% in bonds. Jesus H. Christ on a crutch! I am not an estate-planning expert. The problem is apparently neither are those who say they are. In order to make a how much to spend your first retirement year recommendation, you have to...