Mark Fitz

@davidsenra @elonmusk That was an excellent interview that no doubt will be cited by historians for the next century.

Before SpaceX, @elonmusk's friends tried to discourage him from starting the company. He had ~$180 million after taxes from selling PayPal. They made him watch a compilation of rockets exploding — one after another. "You're literally going to light your fortune on fire. It's going to explode in the sky." He did it anyway. Then, as a side project at @SpaceX, he decided to build satellite-based internet. Teledesic. Iridium. Two of the most catastrophic capital destruction stories in business history. Both tried it before him. Both went bankrupt. Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) on what happened next: "If the rockets are reusable, we're going to be launching them all the time. And then the question becomes, what's going to go in the rockets? [Elon] could wait for the customers to come to [him] with more stuff to put in the rockets, or [he] could just put up [his] own satellites." @Starlink now has over 10 million subscribers.

@GOPGrrlx2 My gas station leaving Portland on Hwy 30 with an added $.13 in Portland and Multnomah County gas tax. Just sayin. Just sayin.

I cannot detest their behavior enough. #orpol

@sensiblemoderat @Jeff_Eager You are correct that. It is the largest single item and most significant expense. Which you knew what I meant. But good for you. I stand corrected. Housing is far cheaper in many cities with wage demographics. That’s is very real. Don’t discount it. There. I corrected you.

@MarkFitzOregon @Jeff_Eager Fun fact: 1/3rd is not a majority of anything!

Huh.

@sensiblemoderat @Jeff_Eager So one third is not a significant majority of expense? So if you adjusted for a realistic more common than not number it wouldn’t change? Again, a curiosity question. I bet it would significantly.

@MarkFitzOregon @Jeff_Eager This is all prices — housing is only 1/3rd of expenses

@sensiblemoderat @Jeff_Eager I would be curious to see that chart redone for income and mode. The most likely occurring cost of housing. Because it bet it changes it quite a bit.

@Jeff_Eager x.com/sensiblemodera…

@Jeff_Eager What if taxes and fees attach themselves to the final cost of the products and services sold within a state? What if THAT could be what is causing the “inflation” difference. Just like tariffs we hear about.

@biofuelslaw I wonder what the domestic biofuel supply does to reduce the price swing from international supply disruptions. Some economist out there has got to have a number associated with biodiesel, renewable diesel and ethanol on lowering prices in a supply disrupted market

The U.S. has produced over 300 billion gallons of liquid #biofuels since the RFS was enacted in 2005. We still aren’t fully energy independent, but renewable fuels have made us much better prepared for the current oil market volatility. #ethanol #renewablediesel #SAF

@MargoLogan @Real_EdDiehl @RepYunker @OregonHouseGOP @PCsnot @Susan_Dupres @blueblooded_AP @vcarman @benedtl x.com/real_eddiehl/s…

Hmmm Christine Drazan doesn't seem to know that this lawsuit was filed in state court in Marion County unless Drazan is trying to tell us she's filed a federal lawsuit herself. @Real_EdDiehl @RepYunker @OregonHouseGOP @PCsnot @Susan_Dupres @blueblooded_AP @vcarman @benedtl @oregoncitizen_

I saw a presentation at a CO2 capture conference where a big oil geologist commented that more than 95% of the world’s geology is commercial unknown beyond oil, water and farmland which is what the focus is. Geothermal as well as potentially thousands of other uses are barely explored by science.

I can’t believe, even today, how under the radar geothermal is. The amount of disruption coming to the energy sector is going to catch a lot of people by surprise.

The down stream liquid fuel sellers in Washington have created this site. If you are following the PNW and Washington state CO2 regulations on liquid fuels you want to follow this page. wafuelprices.com

@LarryDJonesJr @ImChrisChampion First time in my life a character from an Ayn Rand novel has existed IRL.

NYC’s socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, is doubling down on his previous statement that if a company leaves NY, find them and tax them anyway. Now he is saying: "We should take businesses from owners who want to leave due to the tax increases and run them for the city ourselves.” “We should actually make it illegal for them to leave. Fine them to hell." I wonder if New Yorkers are still happy with their decision. What are your thoughts?

@KATUNews Making? Kind of an odd standard for law enforcement. Police need reasonable suspicion of a crime at a minimum to pull someone over. It should be mentioned that standard under US law. To arrest requires probable cause.

The city is considering making officers pull over federal agents to confirm their identity and legitimacy. katu.com/news/local/bea…

@Super70sSports How much? The right amount

Q: How much cocaine were ABC executives on when they green lit Bigfoot and Wildboy? A: All of it.

@RepYunker Uh. That van doesn’t look like it’s an EV.

@ORSecretaryRead @AGDanRayfield Wait. The Federal Government doesn’t have my SSN and birthday? Seems like there is far more to this than that.

Yesterday, we had another massive win for protecting Oregonians’ privacy & the rule of law w/ @AGDanRayfield. Trump's DOJ tried to sue Oregon after we refused to hand over your private data: SSNs, birthdays - all tied to your voting record. The federal court sided with us. #orpol

@KGWNews I love their meat department. I need to stop there far more. Do not sleep on their Drunken Pig sausage.

110-year-old Portland grocer struggles to stay in business: 'We want to give our customers everything that we used to' kgw.com/article/money/…

@BillAckman Social Media.

Why?

@CapitolCurrents @CapitolWong Good for Peter to see that honor on the door. How long has that been there?

Greetings from the @CapitolWong press offices. #orpol #orleg

@BillAckman @realDonaldTrump @SecScottBessent @pulte Probably better would be a no-prepayment first decade. As a thirty year note is very unlikely to go that long.

President @realDonaldTrump and @SecScottBessent, and @pulte, I have a simple idea on how to lower mortgage rates and spreads: One of the unique features of U.S. conventional mortgages is that they are prepayable at any time without a penalty. While this feature is attractive for homeowners, it comes at a significant cost as buyers of mortgage backed securities (‘MBS’) require a significant increase in spread to compensate them for giving the borrower the option to prepay at anytime. Why don’t Fannie and Freddie also offer non-prepayable mortgages where if the borrower wishes to prepay the loan, he would have to pay a prepayment penalty? I asked one of my friends who is an expert and large investor in MBS what the estimated savings today would be on a 30-year Fannie/Freddie mortgage if the borrower would be locked out from prepayment other than by paying a penalty? He estimated that the savings would be about 65 basis points. So a borrower could have a choice: Obtain a 30-year prepayable mortgage at today’s ~6% rate, or at a 5.35% rate, but with the obligation to pay a prepayment penalty if he/she refinanced in the future. The loan could also be made to be portable so that if the home is sold, the new borrower could assume the loan and no prepayment penalty would be owed on a sale. While the ability to prepay is a valuable option, locking in the 65 bps savings upfront over the life of the mortgage may be the difference between the borrower being able to afford the home and not being able to. You could imagine that there could be different versions of this product where the lock out would be for 5 years, 10 years etc. (with different levels of savings for each, the longer the lockout, the greater the savings) and the borrower could custom design the mortgage and its prepayability to meet their life plan. As you know, commercial mortgages work this way. Why couldn’t the same approach be used for home loans?