What in the hell is LOVE?

I have been trying to understand the meaning of love for quite a while. The following reflect my current understanding of "LOVE". Please help me refine it. I do not intend to publicize that I spent time on it. If you are the few who would sees this, please keep it to yourself.

© LOVE: For one to LOVE the loved, is to have:
1) the affection and loyalty to the loved, and
2) the selfless desires to provide…
-(a) Joy and Happiness;
-(b) Security;
-(c) Necessary supports for the meaningful endeavors of the loved; and
-(d) Means and knowledge that allow the loved to control his/her own future, which hopefully lead to 2a, 2b, & 2c
-- and
3) actually act upon these desires.

Rationale for 2D: No one person can guarantee that he/she will always be there for the other. Providing 2D would allow part of the love to last, even when the lover is gone -- rather it is because the lover is no longer affectionate to the loved, or the lover become influentially incapable (i.e. dead / damaged / loser).

TRUE LOVE: The mutual respect and enduring love from and between both parties, where both decide to be faithful, regardless of what lies ahead. ©

I recently questioned why people declare to third parties that he/she is in a "committed relationships", as in having boyfriends and girlfriends. Why and when should one make this declaration? Is it like a social courtesy? How is it related to love? Is it related to possessiveness and fear? Help. . . .

Social Security "Reform"? He called it a fix?

The recent news subjects include the word "social security" on a daily basis. It's incredible. The problem is that babyboomers will start to retire and start to draw more money out of the SS system than younger people will chip in, and it needs to be "fixed". President Bush say that we should privatize social security -- I say "Great!!!" President Bush say we will fund this by taking the money young people chipping in to the system, and invest them into the stock market -- I say "what was the problem again???"

Instead of fixing the worry we talk about now, Mr. President seems to have came up with a "fix social security" plan that reduce further liability of the government to future retiring people, and unload the responsibility into the "market" and people themselves. I have no problem with that. Now, is Mr. President fixing anything else?

He says the plan may model after the Thrift Savings Plan (www.tsp.gov), the retirement plans for federal employees. Out of the five funds in it, one is a Treasury bond fund, the G fund -- that's pretty much what the SS system does now with the surplus. But every time they talk about the SS "reform", stock market (the C or S fund in TSP) was always implied, if not out-loud. Why? What else can Mr. President propose to fix without telling us? Stock Market?

In my understanding of retirement plans, people put a lot of money into the stock market in one way or another: 401k, pension (probably indirectly thru the companies), and TSP -- that's a lot of retirement money flowing into the stock market these days. When the babyboomers retire, I would have to guess that a lot of money would stop flowing in, and more money has to start flowing out of the stock market to fund their retirement or to be placed in some safer securities like bond. If no one else chip in the money to buy the stock, the values would fall until it's low enough to attract someone to buy. With so many babyboomers, I would bet that they will win -- stock market value has to stagnate, or come down slowly for years when they retires, if it doesn't trigger a big sell-off.

It seems that Mr. President is coming to the rescue and trying to get younger people into the stock market, therefore increasing or stabilizing stock values, or bailing out the guys in it now (big investor and to-be retiree alike). Sadly, this reminds me of the "Base" for Mr. President.

Interestingly, it may also fix the problem of low American saving rate, which lead to low domestic investment rate, which lead to U.S. companies relying on foreign capital -- which, I think, may flow out of U.S. when foreign babyboomer retires also.

I don't like this babyboomer situation, and I don't like the feeling that Mr. President seems to be doing so much without telling us. Now, am I supposed to thank for Mr. President is possibly trying to fix the world? Or am I supposed to scream bloody murder because he is probably trying to suck us, the young people, into cushioning the likely down fall of the stock market when babyboomer retires?

Wait!!!! Maybe Mr. President is trying to save us young people, too!!!! Looks like his strategy is to finance it with bonds again, like what the government started decades ago, when and before we were kids. This will push the load to ours kids, like what their generation did to their kids (wait, was that us?)

I love America.

Mortgage Histories I Learned

Many of my acquaintances are talking about houses. Some talking about catching the lowest rate in 30 yrs, some having their house warming parties, some talking about buying just for investment. Below is what I learned from other people, plus my-own rant:
======
I can see that if I bought houses in 1982, I would almost have to be rich by now.... See the historic mortgage rates:
http://www.bondtalk.com/global.cfm?S=charts&SS=spread_history&curve=mort_30yr

If I bought a house back in 1982, the houses would be so cheap because no one can afford to pay the interest for a high principle mortgage loan. The mortgage interest in the first couple years would be backbreaking; but I would have simply gotten an adjustable mortgage or keep on refinancing it. Over time, the monthly payment would decrease because of the lower rates, and the value of the houses would keep on going up because the potential buyers can get loans at lower and lower rate (assuming good up-keep and neighborhood/area). This means bigger and bigger mortgage the buyers can borrow to pay me (the seller), with the same monthly payment that they could afford.

If I did that, I can now brag about houses being "the best investments ever", like many older guys I know. Too bad that I didn't buy then, I was just a kid. And now, I wouldn't dare to bet the rate would keep on decreasing like previous years -- not unless I bet the economy is going down the tube at the same time.

If anything, I would bet the rates are going up. If that were the case, I would think about selling the house and cash out -- too bad that I don't have a house that I can sell now. Looking forward, I see the housing market flattening out at best, if it doesn't start to head down.

But then, it would be an uneducated guess, because I have no idea where the crazy people came from -- these are the crazy people who keeping on buying all the low-yield long-term mortgage-backed securities and keep the mortgage rate down in the first place! Can someone help me answer that? Would those people keep on buying these bonds?

Actually, if I bought a house in the area three years ago, I could still have made out like a bandit. I asked myself, "would I have bought a house back three years ago?" Ans.: Not likely -- for similar reasons as now – This shows that my timing was terrible. "Would I buy now?" -- probably too late. Today, my questions are: "when are the baby-boomlets going to start buying houses?" "When are the baby-boomers going to retire?" "When are they going to move to their retirement destination..., where?"

Looking further back in time, I felt sorry for those guys who bought their houses in mid-1970s. I heard from some retired guys that people were throwing their house keys back at the bank because their house worth so much less than the mortgage, as a result of the interest rate skyward leap in late 1970s and early 1980s. I can see why. But what's up with time period? One of the older guys I talked to say that the economy was slow and Greenspan of the FED (http://www.federalreserve.gov/) proposed to boost foreign investment in the U.S. by raising interest rate sky-high to do that.... Was it the same Greenspan that some people saying, "In Greenspan we trust"? Wow!
======
I rest my case here.
Stanley