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Personally, politics isn't my thing either, but hey others like to discuss about it, so if we're not into it just skip it right?
Anyways, back on cars. I've been having this debate on other forums. The question is "What kind of car passes as a luxury car?" What do you guys think?
To me, a luxury car is a car with the right quality, interior materials, fitting performance and technology, plus a certain degree of exclusivity. Of course, all these measurements vary by brand, depending on each's mission. Just because a car has the latest technology normally available only on luxury brands doesn't make it a luxury car.
As an example, no disrespect but imo a BMW 1-series is not a luxury car. A near luxury is at best imo (though I must admit it's a very very good one), the same goes to Audi A2-A3, and MB A-Bclass, and even my own Acura TSX. OTOH regardless of the poor reception I consider VW Phaeton a true luxury car, along with Toyota Crown and several others not sold in US. An anomaly is the Touareg, a VW badged SUV which is already accepted in US as a luxury entry.
I am concerned that the Banks are headed for even more strain. I hope they take the toxicity out of the system. It would be far more efficient without the tainted stuff.
I hope that the financial industry learns something from the recent past and market manipulation. The rule is if it's too good to be true...
Regards,
OW
High end is the Bentley and RR of the world. Caddy is a mid-stream at best and Lincoln drops lower than that...unless you consider the BoF land yachts that GM and Ford create. The MB, BMW and Lexus have the upper end of luxury from my perspective.
My preference is the Continental GT which Top Gear rates low on the performance aspect relating to steering feel.
Regards,
OW
Enough to know his views on visible minorities, women, immigrants, Abu Gharib victims and GITMO .
My economic views does not dictate that I should like Archie Bunker types like Limbaugh just because he quotes and praises certain economists that I happen to like.
Sorry if I sound offensive to you. Now to change the topic let's focus on cars. My idea of luxury is a old vintage Benz.
Interesting question -- even more interesting that it wasn't answered.
Thanks for holding up our end, in this somewhat hostile environment.
Lately I've been somewhat surprised by how rude people can be on other forums. Just wow, and it makes me appreciate the folks here who can have civilized debates even more.
You're right I should spend my days listening to Limabaugh while singing whimsical Puff the Magic Dragon Tunes ( or was that Obama the Magic....).
MB 540K Autobahn Kurier/Coupe
MB 540K Spezial Roadster
I could be satisfied nonetheless with those Alphas of the same epoque LG use to post here from time to time. All them convey an exotic scent of luxury, adventure and driving tourings. Just now, Aston, Maseratis, may be some Lambo would do the job.
Regards,
Jose
He doesn't understand that old labor economics do not serve the future well. Wiseman will help him understand, I'm sure.
Regards,
OW
Enter the Tau
While neither Toyota’s Lexus-spec 3.5-liter V-6, with its dual direct- and port-injection fuel systems, or VW’s frugal 2.0-liter TDI turbo-diesel surprise us by making the cut, the most notable entry this year is that of Hyundai’s first-ever V-8. Referred to as the Tau and marking the Korean automaker’s first time on the Ward’s list, the all-aluminum 4.6-liter engine is a technical milestone for a company best known for affordable economy cars, yet Hyundai recently was awarded the 2009 North American Car of the Year award with its V-8-powered Genesis luxury sedan.
The 375-hp Tau engine is smooth, efficient, and powerful, but breaks little ground in terms of innovation (variable-valve timing and intake systems are pretty widespread these days). Where the engine really makes its mark is in the fuel efficiency and power. It out muscles and sips less fuel than similar Lexus, Infiniti, Mercedes, and BMW V-8s, yet the Genesis is priced thousands less than the established Japanese and German luxury rides the automaker is gunning for.
Regards,
OW
I'd replace spacious for comfortable & even fits like a glove for performance/luxury.
Heavy side/tank feeling as long as it equates top notch safety. Interior refinements for sure, & as far as exclusivity goes, 1st 3 model years before it hits CPO & 'affordable.'
Luxury & dependability? For the first 3 years & hopefully to the warranty, yes. But, unless there's a lemon involved, there is room to play here.
The top tier luxury players are the ones I assume you mean re city driving & short trips. For the 'lesser' luxury cars, such as your A8 (which I think is a HELC), & it's peers, denying them the chance to do what they are bred for (chomping up long trips @ high speeds) is borderline criminal.
But, I do understand the 'be seen in town' aspect, which cannot be ignored.
Personally, a few things that haven't been mentioned to reach luxury status:
Instead of wood trim, carbon etc., the trimmings should be made of something like whale bone or polished ivory from elephant tusks. Floor mats should be made from polar bear cub pelts, or at the very least, something on the endangered list.
Leather seating & trim should come from the most sacred cows from India.
Just a few idears. ;-)
Just more evidence continues to pile up, doesn't it?
TM
Ward's 10 Best Engines for '09
Regards,
OW
I've also posted on other forums on this subject in the past, but I always came back to a particular quality that I believe a true luxury car should have. A quality beyond the sometimes ultra comfort and prestige, and beyond the sometimes higher level of smooth performance and loaded equipment... a quality called "mystique".
I realize this is a little abstract, but luxury itself is abstract to a large degree. You can sense the mystique of some cars, and it is absent from others. You can feel it. But you can't really measure it... and it so often defies time.
There can be tons of leather and wood stuffed inside a car, but unless that car has a certain mystique about it, it just isn't a true luxury car, IMO.
TM
My list is different from everyone elses.
Criteria
1) Must be in hot demand. Dealers cant get enough of them and good luck in finding one at a dealer's lot.
2) Must have a very long waiting list.
3) For the impatient customer who cant wait? In that case he must end up buying a used one at a hefty premium over MSRP.
4) No discounts whatsoever. The sales rep will laugh in your face if you ask him if he can throw in the floor mats for free.
5) No silly dealership commercials with BIG AL screaming ontop of a Wedding Cake with scantily clad dancing girls around him and yelling on what good deals he has to offer.
6) Must be sold in very small numbers. None of this nonsense in terms of walking out of a shopping mall and not knowing if you are either at a BMW dealer's lot or at a regular parking lot.
7) When you drive one you notice unrestrained lust in peoples' eyes. Not lust for you as a driver but for the car itself.
8) Must be very expensive. So expensive that only a successful finacial embezzler can afford one.(like Madoff before 2008)
Well, by this test, here are the cars that qualify:
Range Rover, Cadillac DTS, S550 4Matic (2) GL450, and GX470.
These are the cars that the Madoff bankruptcy trustee is turning in!
Madoff cars
Agreed. Abstract as it might be, that mystique is made up with a number of subtil features, of which you mentioned some. Pure lines plenty of technological aura is also in it, in my feeling. Not every F1 car have had or has this sort of luxury beauty:
Ferrari F60 produced for 2009 F1 Season
And now we can compare it with:
MB 540K Autobähn Kurier/Coupe (1934)
Regards,
Jose
There can be tons of leather and wood stuffed inside a car, but unless that car has a certain mystique about it, it just isn't a true luxury car, IMO
Fully agreed.
That mystique is made up with a number of subtil features. Pure, technological aura and sensuality are some of them, in my feeling. Not every F1 car have had or has this sort of luxury beauty:
Ferrari F60 produced for 2009 F1 Season
Compare it with the MB 540K Autobahn Kurier/Coupe (1934)
Or with the Spezial Roadster I posted before:
(Not that only sporty car can be luxurious, however; it just happens they are my favorites.)
Regards,
Jose
And let's not forget what the founders of Google drive (hint: a Toyota hybrid that I am interested in). Let us see if they replace their Priuses with a new Prius or a Lexus HS? My bet is that they will choose a Prius .
Good find! We need a government bailout of billionair scam artists. If they stop spending and have to turn their cars back in, we are going to have a depression at the luxury car dealerships. LOL.
Len and Dewey,
Both of you are correct in identifying the government inflation statistics being completely bonkers when they do not take into account asset prices; in other words, grossly understating inflation most of the last couple decades, and grossly overstating it in the last few months of monetary contraction. M1, M2, M3 and MZM are also only aspects of money supply, not the full picture; asset that are perceived to be liquid, including real estate when against which borrowing was easy, is considered as money too in the minds of consumers; that's why American savings rate (usually a contributing factor to M2) went negative as asset prices skyrocketted.
The solution to temporary monetary contraction is not government aimlessly pushing money out. The Keynesian macro "flationists" are wrong because economy is not about people doing random things animated by official whim. Economy is about allocating resources efficiently. Businesses are failing not because their customers don't want their goods, but because the production cost is too high and businesses can't cut prices quickly enough to entice newly hard-nosed customers. For once, the customers are not as wasteful as they used to be any more (good point on this, Dewey). It would make little sense for the government to push money out to favored groups to spend through government projects, which inevitable drive up input factor prices for other private business that would need the same input (including general labor) as those government projects. Heck, why not prop up the Wall Street scam artists for trickle-down effect, like I jokingly mentioned above. We all have a soft spot for luxury cars here, despite the intrinsic "wastefulness" and "unnecessity" associated with them. When we pay for them with money earned from rendering goods and service to other people with free choice for alternatives, the luxury cars serve as incentive for us to work harder and do a better job than our competition. Everyone doing that results in better goods, better services, and higher standard of living for all. When the government doles out money, the competiveness gets focused on lobbying instead of delivering better services and goods, if not out right corruption.
Len,
You make a very good point about the need for drastic tax cuts. It makes me really sad whenever I write paychecks, not because I'm paying money out, but because how much is "withheld" as required by law; in other words, how much money that I am paying but the workers are not getting! Overall consumer net income can go up 50% immediately if all tax were suspended. 33% overall tax burden (including income taxes at federal and state, plus 15% payroll tax, for a typical worker in the $40k+ range), would translate to 50% increase if added back to the 67% usual post-tax net income. For the automakers, the numbers would be even more dramatic because most new car buyers are in the upper quintiles of the income scale. For someone whose tax burden approach 50% (most upper middle class with top marginal federal income tax rate in the neighborhood of 30%, the 50 mark is hit after adding payroll/SE, state tax, sales tax, etc.), suspension of tax would mean a doubling of net income! Even more dramatic for disposable income! Tag can expand his garage again :-) That will empty the overflowing car lots really quick.
Dewey,
It's tough down here in the states, being caught between the left statists and the right statists. After 17 years of public schooling (K through college graduation), people don't understand the difference between "should" (in a moral sense) vs. "government (an instrument of god-like omnipotence) making it happen." Most people tend to lose sight of the cost of enforcement. Most people tend to fall into at least of three potholes: welfare state (left), warfare state (right and left), and police state (right). The left doesn't realize that "common decency" enforced by high taxation is counter-productive and eventually indecent due to decline in productivity and rise of corruption; the right doesn't realize that government enforcement against personal choice, be it drugs or people's desire to better their own lives (immigrants and people who employ them), would be extremely costly both in terms of tax money and personal liberty. It will take time for people to realize that government enforcement is not the solution. A good point to start is asking how much better off people's lives would be if their after-tax income were 50% or 100% more! The numbers are achievable by suspending taxes. The trillions of dollars the government is creating out of thin air to do the bailouts can be re-directed to pay governments' own bills for one year. Of course, the propagandists are quick to tell us how tax cuts would just be put to paying down debt; what they miss is, the negative wealth effect of mounting debt and lack of savings is the reason why consumers are cutting back to begin with. Blowing another asset bubble (if even possible now) would make the next down turn even worse.
I'm afraid to mess with it... LOL.
Seriously, though, I don't quite buy into the last part about consumers. American consumers should indeed save more and reduce their debt, but historically it is more about consumer "confidence" that affects their motivation to spend. There is a high percentage of unemployment, and obvious media attention to the financial crisis, further focused due to the Presidential election. The public's confidence and outlook is poor, and it's actually too hard to get the credit consumers need to be effective consumers.
Consumers may be in a lot of debt, as you posted, but I am convinced that if their confidence levels were higher, and if banks loosened up, most of those consumers would go right back into action.
Debt, as well as the confidence I pointed out, are key ingredients for consumer spending, and when it boils down to it, consumer spending is the engine of our economy.
BTW, since you mentioned my car buying habit... I'm in a retraction mode... it seems that my 5-car garage will only have 3 cars soon, so I am personally ruining the economy.... but I am proud to say that I sure did my share to boost the economy for many, many years!!
TM
You are absolutely correct about consumer confidence. The confidence is hurt because the bubble burst. The consumers had been counting asset appreciation as "income" (asset as "saving"). That's why, like Len and Dewey mentioned ealier, and me too, the government statistics on money supply and inflation/deflation are missing so many crucial elements as to make the numbers completely uncorrelated with reality when the economy went into bubble and when it collapsed. Bubbles always burst, just as trees don't grow to sky. When that happens, consumers count asset decline as "negative income." The solution is not to reflate the burst bubble; bubbles are not sustainable, and the recently burst bubble won't attract new money. Reflation attempt would cause a new bubble to show up somewhere else and the burst of which will be even more painful. The dot-com bubble to housing bubble inllustrated the point. The Great Depression was the result of FED's attempt to reflate after the 1925-26 Florida Real Estate bubble (a national bubble, as investors were mostly out of state), that reflation effort led to the 1926-29 stock market bubble and burst.
A 50-100% increase in after-tax income level would be a huge boost to consumer confidence. Just think how many new jobs would be created. I for one would buy another car if my after-tax income went up that much, and reopen new hiring again. I put a new hiring freeze in place for our firm this time last year as I saw the evident decline in consumer confidence.
The beauty of tax cut vs. government spending is that:
(1) no need of armies of lobbyists to fight over who gets what, and less corruption;
(2) the resultant consumer spending will be more stuff that people want (for cars, would be what's already on the lot first), instead of boondongles for political reasons driving up basic material cost and inflation.
(3) can be done very very quickly! suspend withholding now, and the workers can get more money this very week!
Tax cuts put money exactly where it belongs... and does it immediately without economic filtration.
TM
I actually like the fact that Lexus offers a Sport pkg for the hybrid model. The new nav system has earned rave reviews from even the most ardent critics. And they've even spruced up the interior. Lexus even found a way to squeeze more mpg while using the larger 3.5 and a smaller battery pack. Talk about innovation.
But what I have a problem with is understanding how Lexus managed to put on a whopping 450 pounds over the outgoing model. Of course, the first thing that is always said is that it was structural rigidity and added safety equipment.. But 450 pounds?
Believe it or not, I like it. I may love it when I test drive.
I used to wonder how Lexus managed to put together a luxury midsize SUV 500lbs lighter than all the competition . . . well, wonder no more. LOL. I'm surprised that Lexus did not add third row seats after adding 450lbs.
Just saw your addendum. A far more important contribution you made in all those years was rendering the services that earned you the money to buy the cars. Your phenomenal writing skills brought consumers and producers together through your advertising; your business acumen turned what would have been an empty office and unemployed workers (until someone else hire them anyway) into a productive business. You had to outbid other businesses to secure your office space and your employees. Your business decisions and hard work made the lives of your clients and your landlord more enjoyable, and put food on the table for your employees (through their hard work, too). That's the big contribution you made to the economy. The luxury cars, they are just rewards for your hard work and sound decision making.
The act of car buying itself is not exactly contributory. Otherwise, someone breaking into your garage and stealing all your cars, and forcing you to buy more cars would be worthy of praise; so would someone stealing your money to buy cars . . . comes to think of it, that's a proximation of what tax and government spending does. LOL
Your current decision to cut back on luxury car purchase in hard economic times is once again sound business decision, signaling the rest of the world outside your houshold that there are more important things in life than luxury cars, like paying your employees and maintaining a viable business. Hopefully, like you said, you may find even better use for your employee and business space for new business ventures. Sound decisions like those are how private entreprenuers contribute to the economy. Government schools have been teaching spending=contribution because governments are usually bad at making sound business decisions (nothing against government officials personally; I'd be bad at spending other people's money too) as it operates as a monopoly; most of what it does is spending . . . and crowding out private entreprenuers. Someone stealing your money to buy new cars is theft. Someone from the government that takes your money to buy new cars, well that's taxation and "growing the economy," so they want to tell us :-)
This idea sounded crazy to me at first. But then I checked some numbers from the 2009 Federal budget. Personal income taxes are projected to bring in only $1,259B and corporate taxes only $339B. That just about equals TARP and Obama's stimulus package - is that possible? But of course, this screws up the government's ability to redistribute wealth. And - not to beat a dead horse - it doesn't recapitalize the financial sector, which I still maintain is the real problem.
What do you say of someone who makes about $70-80k every year (middle class, I believe), married with 2 kids or more, but on credit for 2 new cars, a mortgage on his house, yet at the same time applied for a loan to get a lakeside lodge or a boat. Then he wonders why his financial condition is messed up with huge credit card debt and have to file for bankruptcy...
Overstatement? Perhaps, but too many Americans live this kind of lifestyles and they should not be encouraged. Banks shouldnt loosen up, if any I think they need to tighten up somewhat, give no loan unless the applicant can surely pay it back (or at least have very very very promising prospect).
Looks like they are going to have to print a whole lot of money. I realize that some will argue this, but from my personal perspective, given the current situation, I hope they print a sh-t-pile full of it.
TM
But... Having our society drinking credit Kool-Aide for decades, and then suddenly cutting off the flow is insane... as we can see. No one would disagree that it had gotten out of a healthy mode, but a transition to a healthy level would be better... like easing on the brakes instead of stopping by hitting a brick wall.
But first, the vehicle needs a jump start. Then, when it is in motion, gently ease it into the right gear.
TM
Unfortunately, Obama is on the bigger Government side instead of cutting stealing, err, I mean taxing the citizens who are the real answer to fixing the economy.
I am also keenly interested on the GM/C bailout negotiations that will start soon. Seems like credit to fund the outstanding debt is strike one and UAW hard line strike two for complying with the bailout requirements...but I am sure everything is negotiable under new management in Washington.
It's businesses like Tag's that link prosperity between business and consumers. Reducing taxes on him relates to investment in business and thus more job creation. Multiplied by thousands of entrepreneurs, that marks fast stimulation in my mind. Since we are still in a contraction, I think it will take over a year for the final stimulus plan that will be voted on next week to take effect....lookout below after growth comes back. The backlash could be even more sever as we are more linked globally to other economies than ever before. Bad news abroad comes back to bite the U.S. in the long run and vice versa.
m4d, I agree the rules for borrowing should remain firm. If you can't qualify, no deal.
Regards,
OW
Great posts.
Tag, Charlie
This is the way the board should have always been. Thanks for getting me back.
The recapitalization of the financial sector ultimately will have to be done in two ways:
(1) growing the economy significantly so as to make existing debt smaller in comparison (inflation is not a substitute for real economic growth as that transfers real weath from creditors to debtors, shrinking the real economy due to misallocation); suspension of taxation will go a long way towards stimulating real economic growth. More economic growth means more profit for everyone, especially the financial sector, which usually operates as a leveraged play of the economy.
(2) some financial firms that went beyond pale might well be beyond rescue. The liquidation of these will reduce the overall debt load of the entire industry, and also make room for new and more efficient firms to emerge; some may even be re-organized old firms with debt level reduced. Suspension of taxation will also result in homeowners having more money to pay mortgages. Due to habit and inertia, most homeowners choose not to default even if their home value is under water, so long as they can afford to make the monthly payment. So long as the payments are made, it's a performning loan, so the banks don't have to write them down.
Ultimately, capital assets are valued according to cash stream that it can generate. More real economic activity means higher income and higher business return, which means higher rent and higher "owner's equivalent rent," upon which real estates have to valued on a fundamental basis. That's why suspending taxation is a great way to recapitalize the whole economy.
Since the country is already asked to write such huge checks, why burn it up in frictional losses (in lobbying) and wasteful spending on boondongles or things that people do not want. Leaving the money in the hands of taxpayers would be the most efficient way to put money into the economy. Workers can get the money the very same week when withholdings are suspended!
Just imagine how much more prosperous our great country would be if the after-tax income go up by 50% all across the country! (resulting from removing the overall tax rate of 33%, including 15% payroll tax; the quirk of arithmatics regarding the denominator). Disposable income (which accounted for 10-25% of a household's after tax-income before the crash) would go up in multiples of 100%. With that kind increase, we are not just talking about homes and cars again, but also restocked food pantries (which are desperately in need). Americans are fundamentally a generous people. More importantly, there will be private sector productive new jobs for people who now line up at food pantries! Their entry into the car market and housing market, backed up by their new productive jobs, is what will ultimately sustain car sales and real estate prices. New home buyers at the bottom enable the upgrade buyers putting bids into the housing market, in turn supporting the prices at the higher end of the market.
After a year, the taxes can come back in 10% increments (10% of 33-50%; i.e. 3-5% yearly increments) if people so choose. With a bigger economy, the politicians will also have a bigger tax base in the long run, if and when real threats on the global scale emerge.
I'm an ideas guy. Unlike Tag's great writing skills, my writings tend to be tedius and bookish. Anyone good at writings is welcome to expand on this idea (outside this forum too); no credit to me necessary; this idea taking hold and being put into action will be reward enough for all of us. I call it "Tax-Free America"! The trillions of dollars in bailout checks show that, in a pinch, the government can come up with the equivalent of the total tax revenue without collecting taxes at all.
Unlike Tag's great writing skills, my writings tend to be tedius and bookish.
Better than me, bud. My words tend to be very basic and while I understand the terms you guys are using I somehow just can't put it together in my writing style.
Now I understand why I barely passed technical writing class back in college. :P
:surprise:
TM
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."
The key to understand is not inflation vs. deflation, but who gets the inflated money supply, and who gets whacked by deflation. Government as enforcer of central banking (making a piece of paper or an electronic equivalent into legal tender capable of exchanging for the fruit of your labor) benefit from the inflation thanks to progressive tax brackets (higher nominal income result in higher tax rate); on the flip side deflation time, not only is the government sector the most immunte to cut-backs and price reduction, but also the targetted bailouts to rescue friends of the government officials. That's the fundamental problem in the flation cycles (money being adjusted in value by the whims of a privileged few) : government expands on the expense of the productive private sector at both ends. That's why the question is not really what kind of flation we should have, but whether the private competitive sector or the centralized coercive sector gets the chop. If the government/central bank control expands through cycle after cycle, we will end up with something similar to the soviet economy. The preservation of the competitive private sector is crucial to our long term economic well being and personal liberty.
No, I'm not for targetted bailout of failed gamblers or badly run businesses, as that would expand the role of the government and in effect enlarge central planning. A massive tax cut across the board, even a year-long tax holiday altogether, however will put the detailed choice in economic rebalancing back into the hands of (would-be) taxpayers. Failed gamblers too will benefit from that as they must from most ecnomic improvement, but the healthier sectors of the economy will benefit from it even more, far more.
(1) growing the economy significantly....
(2) some financial firms that went beyond pale might well be beyond rescue....
(1) This was the approach that got us out of the Latin American debt default problem. Through the issuance Brady bonds the Feds took on some of the default risk, and the banks had the time to slowly rebuild their equity through future earnings. But the problem now is much larger: the notional value of credit default swaps was estimated at $45.5 Trillion at 12/07, and currently there are about $29.2 Trillion sitting on DTCC's platform alone. No one knows what the "real" value is - one estimate in today's NY Times is one-half of that is internally offset. Still, that leaves almost $15 Trillion at risk.
That's 10 years of all Federal income tax revenues. The problem just seems too big to grow out of.
(2) The size of this issue makes just about any big institution's failure "systemic". We learned this with Lehman. Imagine what happens if multiple institutions fail at the same time.
This is where my pessimism comes from. The reasonable solutions, as painful as they may be, maybe just aren't large enough to handle the hole these greedy ba***rds dug us into.
I'll bet you know how to use Turbo Tax better than him anyway!
Regards,
OW
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Instead of desperate measures such as shutting down markets and nationalize everything . . . if the government is to print dozens of trillions of dollars, instead of bailing out the gamblers, suspend all taxes for a year would actually cost less! Let the ultimate free-market safety net get to work: 50% more after-tax income resulting from tax suspension, and conseuqently household disposable income growing by multiple times will quickly make many marginal mortgage debts good again and create new jobs. Cars will move off lots very quick if people's disposable income go up that much.
Having the government assuming all counterparty risks for Wall Street gamblers ("too big to fail" in effect) is guaranteed to make the gamblers place even bigger bets next time, just like what happened in the decade after the LTCM bailout in 1998. IMHO, it's time for a tax-free America's "free market safety net" creating new job opportunities and new business opportunites to catch the flotsam and jetsoms of the coming liquidation wave later this year. It will certainly beat the heck out of the alternative: printing massive amount of money to pay unemployment benefits.
If I were to buy a car now, I'd go for a new LX or Landcruiser, which was at the tail end of a long product run when I leased the R. A lot more expensive in terms of three-year ownership, but will be for keeps instead. The R is fetching at auctions little over half the lease residual. Good grief! Glad I passed the ball to MB.
Fine choices, but I'd suggest the GL, like Len has.
TM
If and when the House of Representative is expanded to the original constitutionally suggested representation ratio, and reps are truely representative of people from all ranks of life serving their turn of two years almost like jury duty, I might be interested in my two years then get the heck out. Until then, grass root effort in private capacity, inspiring others and inspired by others through free exchange of ideas is more my cup of tea.
Strangely, I'm actually encouraged by Geitner's history of not paying taxes. Hey, let's hope he's not a hypocrit, and give the whole country a break as a matter of sound fiscal policy. LOL.
TM