vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
no insult, Detroit was to cars what Glasgow was to ships... it happened all over the west during the last 30 years. Ayrshire is funny though, I live in a small town really a few miles out of Kilmarnock, Glasgow is technically more accessible to me (to the north). Glasgow has been pretty much rebuilt from it's tenements and shipbuilding fame. Still issues, but they are getting there - Detroit will too. In ayrshire (south west) we had a MASSIVE industry of lace and mining once. Some of the best in the world apparently - that all disappeared to the far east during the 50s. during the 80s/90s we had a massive Fullerton plant, beacham Glaxosmithklein and even DEC had production here. Guess what? as those could be automated - that was all offshored too. Further North we had 'Silicon Glen' I believe the pun was intended. IBM had a massive site of many thousand workers, Lenovo took them over and within a few years that was all gone too. The original IBM workers had great benefits... they originally sold the site and weaned off the staff and then re-leased the site and took all the staff back on via an agency. The only difference being all the benefits of working for IBM were gone. That went on for a few years or so and then Lenovo took over IBMs consumer hardware side. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_glen This being the funnier side of things, InverKip Powerstation, built for Silicon glen and then hardly used: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverkip_power_station To be fair there is still a huge GlaxoSmithKline site at Irvine and we are supposedly getting another 3k workers back ( a bit like the CAT story ) This area will be very grateful for the work, just like your Southern states. The trend I interpreted is that, as soon as things could be automated that was when things went away and when margins started to fall out of electronics, that was just the excuse they needed.
Be radical! (I assume you are not working for a city bank getting paid “city wages” – e.g. you are one of the 99% of people in London or more “normal” income.) House prices and rents in London and anywhere within reasonable commuting distances are now so high that couples in reasonable jobs often have to rent rooms in shared houses (HMOs).   This is due to so many people wishing to live/work in London and there not being enough new homes built.  If you are looking at buying a property to rent out, you need the rent to be about double the interest payments on the mortgage – otherwise you will not be able to afford repairs, or cope when interest rates increase – (you could also get a tax bill that is more the your profit).   Finding such a property is very hard in London, as the prices of homes have gone up a lot more in London then rents have.     There are still some flats where the rent will cover the landlord’s costs, but not many.   (Any landlord that brought more than a few years ago, is making a very nice profit in London, as the rents have gone up a lot since they brought – but are you willing to bet your life on the rents going up even more?) Moving a short distance out of London, does not help much. So look at somewhere like Manchester or Birmingham
When a product is subsidised the consumer is not paying the true cost of the product.  Therefore, the consumer is purchasing the product for less than it costs to make.  All the aeroplane industries are subsidised in the world.  Therefore all planes are sold for less than what it cost to make.  Governments subside industries because they see the long-term benefits and the benefits outweigh the costs.  These benefits can be because of increased employment, investment in technology, a country's security or even national pride.
The important thing to realize is, what would you do, if you didn't have the call? If you didn't have call options, but you wanted to have a position in that particular stock, you would have to actually purchase it. But, having purchased the shares, you are at risk to lose up to the entire value of them-- if the company folded or something like that.  A call option reduces the potential loss, since you are at worst only out the cost of the call, and you also lose a little on the upside, since you had to pay for the call, which will certainly have some premium over buying the underlying share directly. Risk can be defined as reducing the variability of outcomes, so since calls/shorts etc. reduce potential losses and also slightly reduce potential gains, they pretty much by definition reduce risk. It's also worth noting, that when you buy a call, the seller could also be seen as hedging the risk of price decreases while also guaranteeing that they have a buyer at a certain price. So, they may be more concerned about having cash flow at the right time, while at the same time reducing the cost of the share losing in value than they are losing the potential upside if you do exercise the option. Shorts work in the same way but opposite direction to calls, and forwards and futures contracts are more about cash flow management: making sure you have the right amount of money in the right currency at the right time regardless of changes in the costs of raw materials or currencies. While either party may lose on the transaction due to price fluctuations, both parties stand to gain by being able to know exactly what they will get, and exactly what they will have to pay for it, so that certainty is worth something, and certainly better for some firms than leaving positions exposed. Of course you can use them for speculative purposes, and a good number of firms/people do but that's not really why they were invented.
"When you have multiple assets available and a risk-free asset (cash or borrowing) you will always end up blending them if you have a reasonable objective function.  However, you seem to have constrained yourself to 100% investment.  Combine that with the fact that you are considering only two assets and you can easily have a solution where only one asset is desired in the portfolio.  The fact that you describe the US fund as ""dominating"" the forign fund indicates that this may be the case for you.  Ordinarily diversification benefits the overall portfolio even if one asset ""dominates"" another but it may not in your special case. Notice that these funds are both already highly diversified, so all you are getting is cross-border diversification by getting more than one.  That may be why you are getting the solution you are.  I've seen a lot of suggested allocations that have weights similar to what you are using. Finding an optimal portfolio given a vector of expected returns and a covariance matrix is very easy, with some reliable results.  Fancy models get pretty much the same kinds of answers as simple ones.  However, getting a good covariance matrix is hard and getting a good expected return vector is all but impossible.  Unfortunately portfolio results are very sensitive to these inputs.  For that reason, most of us use portfolio theory to guide our intuition, but seldom do the math for our own portfolio.  In any model you use, your weak link is the expected return and covariance.  More sophisticated models don't usually help produce a more reasonable result. For that reason, your original strategy (80-20) sounds pretty good to me.  Not sure why you are not diversifying outside of equities, but I suppose you have your reasons."
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"I really think the government should have a few 'elite' groups inside of each of their big divisions filled with mathematicians, statisticians, computer scientists, and experts in the fields.   I'm thinking a group pursuing medicare fraud, a group pursuing SEC violations, a group pursuing DOD embezzling, etc.  It's not like these criminals are especially competent, they just rely on staying under the radar.   Hiring a team of 50 or 100 or whatever top notch analysts and then giving them a cut of the fraud they've exposed would go a long way toward attracting top talent in a way that is politically defensible. The SEC doesn't work because being an SEC lawyer pays about a twentieth of what being a lawyer for a hedge fund does. Imagine that same SEC lawyer getting 1% or 5% of the settlements / penalties that are levied against fraudulent companies. You could still become ""fuck you"" rich while working for the government and the US would be a lot better off."
You ARE naive in that you are concerned about employees who have already choosen for the most part their career fates.  Newsflash buddy, unskilled workers are at the largest risk of becoming unemployed in an increasingly unstable economy.   I realize you come from a world of lifetime employment, benefits, retirement, pensions (what's that?!) but that simply isnt the world anymore. For the last few decades this country's potential has been squandered and this is the end result. Very little opportunity for an increasing majority of participants and crushing overhead destroying all but the most profitable and sustainable business models.
"Assuming no constraints on how much you can move (or how frequently) into and out of your offset mortgage account, the question becomes one of what rate of return you expect from your long-term savings/emergency cash fund. The rate you are getting from the offset mortgage account is known; since it reduces the principal amount owing and thus reduces interest charges, the return is the mortgage rate (though I would not be surprised if the offset mortgage account contract has bells and whistles reducing the effective rate, saying something like 3 pounds reduction of principal for every 5 pounds you put in). So, as a movie character once said, ""Do you feel lucky today?""  If so, move money from your offset mortgage account to savings, and earn more.  If not, move money in the opposite direction. A ""guaranteed"" 2% return on the offset mortgage account might be better than taking a risk on the vagaries of the stock market, and even the possibility of loss in your long term savings account."
I can't quite follow your question, so I'm proceeding under the following assumptions: - You paid £31,000 - Your partner paid £4,242 - You have at least one mortgage, which you both pay equally. If the relationship terminates, sell the property. You are reimbursed £31,000 and your partner is reimbursed £4,242. Any remaining proceeds from the sale are split 50-50. If the result is a net loss (i.e. you are underwater on your mortgage), you split the debt 50-50. If you are not both paying the same toward the mortgage, I'd split the profit or loss according to how much you each pay toward the mortgage. Of course, this is not the only possible way you can split things up. You can use pretty much any way you both think is fair. For example, maybe you should get more benefits from a profit because you contributed more up-front. The key thing, though, is that you must both agree in writing, in advance. This is reasonable; this is what I did, for example. Note that if the relationship ends, one or the other of you may wish to keep the property. I'd suggest including a clause in your written agreement simply disallowing this; specify criteria to force a sale. But I know lots of people are happy to allow this. They treat that situation as a forced sale from both people to one person. For example, if your partner chooses to stay in the house, he or she must buy the property from you at prevailing market rates.
Paying down your mortgage saves lots of interest. With a long term mortgage you end up paying twice us much to the bank than the sales price of the house. Even low mortgage interests are higher than short term bonds. The saving of those interest are as much an investment as the interest you get from a bond. However, before paying off a mortgage other higher interest loans should be paid off. Also it should be considered if the mortgage interest create a tax reduction in the comparison with any other options.
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"OK, there is no way in hell that  a stranger should have your contact details. there is no way in hell that a stranger should be able to determine your name from that account number unless you are previously known to them. Have they explained to your satisfaction how any previous relationship was established? It was correct to direct them back to their own bank or their branch manager if they bank with the CBA. There are procedures in place for this, and you are in the clear if the bank handles it. Even there is a previous relationship, and you are in their address book, think long and hard about their ""bona fides"". It may not have been a scam they may have had fat fingers and be genuinely out of pocket now. It is SOP that if you refuse to refund the money the banks will become less helpful. (EDIT - you have consented to retrun the money). EDIT  - IF you had not consented... Disclosure: I am a former CBA employee and a 20 year veteran of NetBank, and these are my own opinions."
&gt;  I would have to spend at least a few more years in school rather than a single semester to get a comp sci major instead of the minor.  Exactly. And the benefits are priced appropriately. As in, you will get it off a minor about what you put in - not much.
"The issue with college is the current ""business model"" which is to get as many asses in seats as possible. Colleges were initially designed to teach a select few, and not intended for mass attendance.   The day colleges went from being institutions geared towards attracting like-minded people interested in intellectual pursuits into education factories crumbling under the weight of administrative bloat is when the classical concept of a college education died. We don't educate people anymore, we process them to fit a particular mold in the labor pool.  That being said, if you are someone who is genuinely interested in educating yourself, college is still the way to go. Just be aware of what you're getting yourself into, and understand that a degree is not a ticket to employment."
"As a general rule in many countries, pyramid schemes are illegal, so don't plan on getting rich anytime soon by being involved in one.  Anything you earn through such a scheme is subject to forfeiture because it is ill-gotten gains. The entire basis of a pyramid scheme is that the focus is principally on recruiting new ""downlines"", not selling a product or service.  I would strongly advise you to find a different way to riches.   Multi-level marketing very rarely makes much money for anyone except the first people in the food chain, and the odds of finding such an early-stage opportunity are exceedingly small.  For every successful MLM program there are probably 25 that never make it off the launch pad.  Be honest in asking yourself -- if it was really that easy, why wouldn't everyone just get into MLM?  It's more hype than substance.  Do you know who buys most of the product?  The newest people who ""drink the Koolaid"", because they're convinced they need to have plenty of inventory on hand for their potential customers.  I can't tell you how many people I know who spent hundreds or even thousands of dollars on buying product they never managed to sell.  It's much tougher than people think, even with a good product."
First, what country are you in? Canada doesn't offer a mortgage interest tax deduction, the US does. This changes the math a bit, and in the US, the current after tax cost of a mortgage is below our long term inflation rate.   Is the mortgage your only debt? I've seen people religiously pay extra each month to their 6% mortgage while carrying 18% interest debt on credit cards.  Next, there are company matched retirement plans, in the US, a 401(k) plan, where if you put up to 6% or so of your pay into the account, it's effectively doubled upon deposit. I'd be sure not to miss such an opportunity. After these considerations, prepaying is equal to buying a risk free fixed instrument. If that appeals to you, and you've considered the above first, go for it. Keep in mind, money paid to the mortgage isn't easily borrowed back, short of a HELOC. I'd strongly advise that your emergency fund be fully funded (6 months worth of spending) before starting to make extra mortgage payments.
The 19th century called, they want your socialism back.  &gt;I bet neither the military, NASA, FDA or your local police station/firefighters aren't providing any usefullness...  Let's see...  * Military? - not sure what good I'm getting of some fucker in Afghanistan being killed  * NASA - yes, I get value from that  * FDA - ditto, but not that much  * police - I'd rather get them reduced in size  * firefighters - we need a lot of audits on the effectiveness of those  When I buy a product from a private corporation, there are a lot of rosources that I can consult on the value they provide. I can choose between the different providers.  When the government taxes me, I don't have a choice. I must pay the taxes no matter what. It'a a totally different situation.
Inflation isn't a concern right now despite the large amount of new money being injected, because the current economy is so lackluster right now that the new cash is just being sat upon by corporations and being used by consumers to pay down debt, instead of what the Fed and Government want us to do (hire, update equipment, buy houses and American cars, etc). In addition, the ""spot market price"" for a T-bond, or any investment security, is generally what the last guy paid. By buying Treasury debt gradually at a fixed price, the Fed can smooth out ""jitters"" in the spot price that speculators may try to induce by making low ""buy offers"" on T-debt to increase yields. Lastly, the Fed can tell banks that they must keep a certain amount of their deposits in ""reserve"", basically by keeping them in a combination of cash in the vault, and in accounts with the Fed itself. This has a dual purpose; higher reserve rates allow a bank to weather a ""run"" (more people than usual wanting their money) and thus reduces risk of failure. An increased reserves amount also reduces the amount of money circulating in the economy, because obviously if the banks have to keep a percentage of assets in cash, they can't invest that cash. Banks are currently required to keep 10% of ""deposited assets"" (the sum of all checking and savings accounts, but not CDs) in cash. This compounds the other problems with banks' investing; not only are they not getting a great return on your savings, they can only use 90% of your savings to get it."
The 50% rule says that the rent needs to be double your mortgage payment to account for expenses. You also have to factor in the hassle of dealing with tenants, the following are not going to happen when you own a mutual fund, but are almost inevitable if you are a landlord long enough: For whatever reason you have to go to court and evict a tenant. A tenant that probably lost their job, or had major medical issues. The nicest tenant you ever met with the cutest kids in the world that you are threatening to make homeless. Every fiber of your being wants to cut them some slack, but you have a mortgage to pay and can't set an expectation that paying the rent on time is a suggestion not a rule. or the tenant, who seemed nice at first, but now considers you ""the man"" decides to fight the eviction and won't move out. You have to go through a court process, then eventually get the Sheriff to come out and forcibly remove them from the property, which they are treating like crap because they are mad at you. All the while not paying rent or letting you re-let the place. The tenant isn't maintaining the lawn and the HOA is getting on your butt about it. Do you pay someone to mow the grass for them and then try to squeeze the money out of the tenant who ""never agreed to pay for that""? You rent to a college kid who has never lived on their own and has adopted you as their new parent figure. ""The light in the closet went out, can you come replace the bulb?"" Tenants flat out lying to your face. ""Of course I don't have any pets that I didn't pay the deposit for!"" (Pics all over facebook of their kids playing with a dog in the ""pet-free"" house)"
The Money Market is a place where one trades Instruments. The market is similar to that of the Stock Market. The instruments traded in Money Markets include Short Term Debt Instruments as well as FX Swap Instruments and Mortgage & Asset Backed Securities. The FX & Mortgage Securities are not Debt instruments per se. They also include other custom created instruments that are traded. The definition of Short Term debt is any guaranteed instrument with a maturity of less than a year. These instruments are used in various transactions, including retail and the Money Market is not the only place these are traded.
Via www.socialsecurity.gov:  As a result of changes to Social Security enacted in 1983, benefits are now expected to be payable in full on a timely basis until 2037, when the trust fund reserves are projected to become exhausted.   These estimates reflect the intermediate assumptions of the Social Security Board of Trustees in their 2009 Annual Trustees Report. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has been making similar estimates for several years that tend to be somewhat more optimistic than the trustees' estimates principally because CBO assumes faster growth in labor productivity and real earnings levels for the future.   Doesn't seem too optimistic from the program itself. Also, it is true that recessions end, but in our current state of being trillions of dollars in debt, does it look like things are on the upswing?
"You don't mention what kind of insurance you're talking about, but I'll just address one angle on the question. For some kinds of insurance, such as health insurance (in the US), auto insurance, and homeowner's insurance, you may be insuring against an event that you would not be able to pay for without the insurance.  For instance, if you are at fault in a car accident and injure someone, they could sue you for $100,000.  A lot of people don't have $100,000.  So it's not even a matter of ""I'll take the risk of having to pay it when the time comes""; if the time comes, you could lose virtually everything you own and still have to pay more from future earnings.  You're not just paying $X to offset a potential loss of $Y; you're paying $X to offset a potential derailment of your entire life.  It is plausible that you could assign a reasonable monetary value to that potential ""cost"" that would mean you actually come out ahead in the insurance equation. It is with smaller expenses (such as insuring a new cellphone against breakage) that insurance becomes harder to justify.  When the potential nonfinancial ""collateral damage"" of a bad event are less, you must justify the insurance expenses on the financial consequences only, which, as you say, is often difficult."
You can criticize this all day long but at least take into account state benefits for being a parent and the fact that more children is an opportunity for more support later in life. Some families seemingly don't have a choice and some are trying to take advantage of the system and play the victim card. It's not merely a simple breeding habit