Legoland951

Like Walmart, Harbor freight sell lots of Chinesse goods and I just spent a lot of $ today at Harbor Freight (Chinese 3200 watt a/c invertor and Russian cutting wheels etc) for my diesel minibus/rv conversion. The friend working on upgrading the minibus turbo diesel works on boats and he mentioned he knows the owner of Harbor Freight. He works on the owner's 5 million dollar yacht. I was impressed but he told me the guy has a 15 million dollar jet so the yacht is cheap in comparison. I asked him how does Harbor freight get all the tools? He told me the owner has a factory in China that will pretty much make anything if he brings a sample. I thought for sure the owner was Chinese but was surprised to find out the guy was white. I have been to their Camarillo warehouse and you need a golf cart to get from one end to the other end. I figured that guy was rich to start with but found out he used to sell cheap tools (not snap on or mac type) from the back of a truck. Now he employs over 3000 people in the U. S. and more overseas. I want to mention this because I believe people like the owner of Harbor Freight is what makes this country strong by adapting/changing with the times to get ahead.

Chris, I think we are trying to say the same thing after rereading your post. I thought you were saying treasury bonds have a put option function. I think we agree that treasury bonds have no options whatsoever so it does not have a call or put function. Yes its much more complicated if one cares to dig deeper into it but its not hard to understand the main concepts of the trend.

For what its worth to clarify for people who want to know, the treasury department arbitrarily dictate the terms of new issues in open market operations so interest rates are not affected by market conditions/forces (these are IOU notes old people are spending and you have to pay back when they are dead). The federal reserve banks are PRIVATELY OWNED - imagine how rich you would be if your family is one of the owners knowing when every interest rate increase or decrease is going to happen - and controlled by a panel of half bankers and half government appointees headed by Bernanke (appointed by the president). If we need to borrow more money for the war, we increase the interest rate of the new issue and more quantities are "sold" to buyers like foreign governments (we pay them more to borrow their money so they lend more). The byproduct of increasing interest rates to attract foreign governments are higher mortgage rates since many mortgage interests are indexed to the 10 year treasury (pay higher mortgage for your house). Due to the US cheapening our $ by printing money like crazy (increasing our money supply m3 close to double in the last 10 years), we have to keep increasing interest rate paid out to keep bonds attractive, increasing mortgage rates have slowed the real estate industry (diluting money 2 to 1 you have to double the interest to keep real interest the same). Secondary markets are adversely affected as new issues have higher interest rates than the existing bonds sold in the past since the effective yield is higher for the new bonds (dropping treasury bond prices so your 401k conservative investment in bonds decrease in value too). None of this is "good" or "bad" just like stock. It all depends on which side you are on as in the case if stock prices drop and you are short, you make money whereas if you are long, you lose.

If you want to know how our money is diluted and how we are screwing foreign governments, read this: http://bigpicture.typepad.com/commen..._the_we_2.html.

In March 2006, the Board of Governors ceased publishing the M3 monetary aggregate (money supply) which has been published for decades. I wonder why. http://www.newyorkfed.org/aboutthefe...int/fed49.html

Damn now I feel like a nerd but 2 things I have a passion for is money and 944s.

PuttingThePoorBackInPorsche

Harbor freight stuff is pure and total garbage. I wouldn't use their stuff if they paid ME to use it. Everything I've ever gotten from there has either broken, failed or otherwise proven substandard. I wouldn't trust them for a screwdriver, but that's just me - for some of us, an expectation of reasonable quality still exists.

ausgeflippt951

^^ well of course it'll break/explode/melt: it cost your $2! We, of all people (being P-car owners) should know you get what you pay for 10-fold in the automotive industry.

I've found their impact extensions work quite well, as do their jackstands, rubber mallets, zip ties (for the light stuff), multimeters, etc. Use your head when it comes to buying cheap. You wouldn't buy a whole car from China, right? Because it'll be a cheap piece of crap. So why are you buying tool sets from there? Harbor Freight definitely has its uses; the key is to recognize what they are.

Legoland951

What have you bought that fell apart? Though most of my tools are Snap On and I have triplicate of just about every tool, I know for certain my craftsman screwdrivers are inferior to the ones at harbor freight. I have much broken snap on tools so my tools go through industrial strength use (lots of brute force and ignorance) more than most people's. I have 2 Harbor Freight A/C invertors and they run 2 HOUSE AIR CONDITIONING UNITS in my minibus so I don't have to have the engine running to have A/C and they never gave me any problems. I have a 3/4 inch drive socket set up to 50mm and I have broken loose many axle nuts by 5ft cheater bars and jumping on the bars (over 1000ft lb of torque). I have a coleman (also made in China) and HF cordless 18v set of drill/circular saw/sawsall/light and used it to pretty much rebuild my house (every piece of wiring, piping, 65% of all framing, all 14 windows, etc) and nothing has failed including the battery. I bought countless wire brushes and they worked very well all the way until when the wires wore down to nothing after repeated use. I bought 2 aluminum 2 ton jacks one from Costco and another one from HF. The HF one is still great after 3 yrs while the costco one suffered a BENT FRAME after 3 uses (I have 5 steel 2-1/2 ton jacks and 1 3 ton jack at home so I got plenty of spares like I do with my 17 944s currently). Their 6 ton jackstands never failed me even when I used them for one of my 25ft diesel minibus. The gigantic tool box I bought from HF is much better made than any of my other craftsman boxes and yes its better than my old snap-on rollaway too as it does not have ball bearings (yes I have several top/bottom rollaway boxes covering 15 ft wide section of my garage containing the triplicates of tools I tend to misplace in my mess). Heck, I have 3 identical sets of Snap On allen sockets ($90 for 7 sockets) and bent several with my titanium IR 2135ti gun but the HF ones have not bent or failed yet though they cost less than $10.

This "cheap quality" rhetoric sounds much like what I heard back in the 70s about Toyotas and Hondas. Same people laughing at these cars spend twice as much to buy a Chevy Nova instead of a Honda Civic to have their door fall off in the first month of ownership. Sometimes, I wonder if I shop at the same HF chain as you guys. I am curious to know what you guys have broken.

CarbonRevo

I have had good results with HF. Granted, we tend to buy as much craftsman as we can. Luckily, our Sears was closing for good, so we got a lot of craftsman tools for dirt cheap. The only thing we are missing is the 3/4 drive set. The whole craftsman kit will cost you well over 400 bucks as the wrench itself is like 239, and their biggest socket is like 28 or something. The whole NF kit is around 200 somewhere. It's cheap, and will last.

We bought some stubby box end wrenches from HF, and they work awesome. The next purchase I want is stubby flex end wrenches. They have come in handy. I'd also like the new craftsman wrench that is rotated 90* on the handle. Makes a world of difference.

As legoland has said...you must not be shopping at the same store, as we have atleast 2 very happy customers here. We have bought a lot of stuff there, including our spring compressors in which I have used 4 times on various cars to lower/lift them, which is over 22 springs compressed, and they still work to this day. Never a doubt in my mind that they would explode. Much better then the spring compressors my friend bought for double the price (I used them once, and it popped OFF the spring while compressing! Talk about scary!)...

Just because something is cheap doesn't mean it's junk. Like hondas for example. Hondas are built cheaply, but effectively.

bigred1001

Yeah, harbor frieght is great, the allen head socket I bought from them lasted through intake bolt removal, but fell apart after replacing and torquing them down. Another place on the do not buy from list.

yellowline

You'd think that everyone shopping at Harbor Freight and saving all that money would have $18 so they could discuss this where it belongs, in OT...

Can we please keep it tech-oriented, with the occasional classified ad?

bigred1001

But then this thread would have died 4 pages ago.