The logic is simple: renting is just flushing money down the toilet; buying a house gives you a piece of something to call your own. You earn home equity and end up with something tangible to pass down to your heirs–or to sell or refinance when you retire.

There is a kernel of truth to all of this. But it’s mostly crap. I’ve been a renter all my adult life, and I have plenty of home equity. My home equity is called “cash,” and it’s the accumulated difference between what I pay in rent and what a comparable homeowner pays for their mortgage, maintenance, property taxes, and utilities. (Sure, I pay for all of those things indirectly, but that’s the point: they’re rolled into my rent, and they’re not rolled into your mortgage.)

Unlike a homeowner, I can choose to invest my equity in something other than real estate. I can spend my equity without taking out a line of credit. I might squander my equity, but I’ll never be “underwater” due to the vagaries of the market. And I accumulate home equity more quickly than the average homeowner.

Yes, thirty years from now, when your mortgage is paid off, you will own a home, free and clear. You know what I’ll own? Enough money to pay cash for your home.

Sure, I’m making a big assumption: I’m assuming the value of your house won’t rise much faster than inflation (or, at least, not much faster than the performance of my investments). Harvard professor Ed Glaeser, writing on the New York Times’s Economix blog, thinks this is an excellent assumption:

Houses are assets, too, but it’s a mistake to expect them to offer a regular rise in price. Houses pay hefty dividends to their owners in the form of living space–that’s the real return on housing investment–and the basic economics of housing doesn’t point to perpetual price growth.

Indeed, the Case-Shiller index, the most respected measure of housing prices, shows that they’ve barely outpaced inflation since 1890.

I’m also assuming that I have the discipline to keep saving the money. So far so good. Homebuying is often lauded as a “compulsory saving scheme.” I guess that’s true: it’s a scheme that compels you to invest a large proportion of your money in real estate. How is this better than simply increasing your 401(k) contribution?

Two kinds of renters

We’re not so different, Joe Homeowner and me. I rent property from a landlord. He rents money from a bank.

Every month, I write my landlord a check. The money gets spent on orthodontia for the landlord’s kids, and I will never see it again.

Every month, Joe writes his banker a check. The interest portion of the payment–for Joe, that’s well over half the payment, more than I spend on rent for a similar home–gets spent on polishing the banker’s yacht, and Joe will never see it again.

For this analogy, I’m indebted to David Crook of the Wall Street Journal, who wrote a landmark 2007 column on the topic:

Mortgage interest is rent that you pay to your lender for the use of its money rather than to a landlord for the use of his house…most of your monthly payment neither builds equity nor is deductible. It just goes down the same black hole that sucks up any other renter’s money. And it takes 20 years before a typical borrower pays more principal each month than interest.

Oh, but what about the mortgage interest deduction? It’s not for Joe. It’s for my landlord and Joe’s banker. Only half of homeowners take it–the rest are better off with the standard deduction–and the average tax savings for those who do is $2000, according to Roger Lowenstein of the New York Times. (The big winners in the mortgage interest deduction game are homeowners who make over $250,000 a year but not so much that they can afford to buy a home with cash.)

Trapped in the closet

Home ownership, it has long been said, leads to financial and community stability. The last three years should have taught everyone that “owning” (that is, financing) a home is no protection against financial upheaval.

As for community stability, be careful what you wish for. If you lose your job, the worst place to find yourself is trapped in an underwater house. I could move with two weeks notice and get my security deposit back.

This isn’t just anecdote. As Tim Harford reported in Slate:

English economist Andrew Oswald has shown that across European countries, and across U.S. states, high levels of home ownership are correlated with high levels of unemployment…. Renting your home and staying flexible do wonders for your chances of always finding an interesting job to do.

As for high levels of homeownership creating community, I’m not sure how you would measure that. All I know is that my family lives in one of the safest and most desirable census tracts in Seattle; as of the 2000 census, it consisted of 85% renters.

Why buy?

Am I saying nobody should buy a house? Of course not. There are plenty of situations where you would want to do so:

• You live in a place where the total monthly cost of renting is similar to borrowing. This is true in a lot of non-housing-bubbly places, outside of big cities and off the coasts. In that case, sure, why not?
• You really want to be able to renovate. Yes, this requires ownership. But be careful: renovation costs are almost never recouped when a house is sold. Also, people talk about the ability to customize as if this should be important to everyone. I just don’t care to get my hands dirty.
• The kind of house you want in the neighborhood you want isn’t available for rent. (This is unlikely to be the case in the present market, however).
• There’s a specific house you want, and you can afford to buy it with a big down payment and a boring 15- or 30-year fixed-rate mortgage.

Just because a house isn’t a good investment, in most cases, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t buy one. A steak isn’t a good investment, either. The problem is, houses cost more than steaks, and a lot of people are convinced that everyone should own one, whether they can afford it or not. If you can’t afford to buy real estate, or just don’t want to, don’t. It’s okay. You’re still a grownup.

Me? There isn’t anything I want out of my financial, social, or family life that requires me to own real estate. So I rent.

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Hungry Monkey out now: http://hungrymonkeybook.com/

Father Gabriele Amorth, 85, who has been the Vatican’s chief exorcist for 25 years and says he has dealt with 70,000 cases of demonic possession, said that the consequences of satanic infiltration included power struggles at the Vatican as well as “cardinals who do not believe in Jesus, and bishops who are linked to the Demon”.

He added: “When one speaks of ‘the smoke of Satan’ [a phrase coined by Pope Paul VI in 1972] in the holy rooms, it is all true – including these latest stories of violence and paedophilia.”

He claimed that another example of satanic behaviour was the Vatican “cover-up” over the deaths in 1998 of Alois Estermann, the then commander of the Swiss Guard, his wife and Corporal Cedric Tornay, a Swiss Guard, who were all found shot dead. “They covered up everything immediately,” he said. “Here one sees the rot”.

A remarkably swift Vatican investigation concluded that Corporal Tornay had shot the commander and his wife and then turned his gun on himself after being passed over for a medal. However Tornay’s relatives have challenged this. There have been unconfirmed reports of a homosexual background to the tragedy and the involvement of a fourth person who was never identfied.

Father Amorth, who has just published Memoirs of an Exorcist, a series of interviews with the Vatican journalist Marco Tosatti, said that the attempt on the life of Pope John Paul II in 1981 had been the work of the Devil, as had an incident last Christmas when a mentally disturbed woman threw herself at Pope Benedict XVI at the start of Midnight Mass, pulling him to the ground.

Father José Antonio Fortea Cucurull, a Rome-based exorcist, said that Father Amorth had “gone well beyond the evidence” in claiming that Satan had infiltrated the Vatican corridors.

“Cardinals might be better or worse, but all have upright intentions and seek the glory of God,” he said. Some Vatican officials were more pious than others, “but from there to affirm that some cardinals are members of satanic sects is an unacceptable distance.”

Father Amorth told La Repubblica that the devil was “pure spirit, invisible. But he manifests himself with blasphemies and afflictions in the person he possesses. He can remain hidden, or speak in different languages, transform himself or appear to be agreeable. At times he makes fun of me.”

He said it sometimes took six or seven of his assistants to to hold down a possessed person. Those possessed often yelled and screamed and spat out nails or pieces of glass, which he kept in a bag. “Anything can come out of their mouths – finger-length pieces of iron, but also rose petals.”

He said that hoped every diocese would eventually have a resident exorcist. Under Church Canon Law any priest can perform exorcisms, but in practice they are carried out by a chosen few trained in the rites.

Father Amorth was ordained in 1954 and became an official exorcist in 1986. In the past he has suggested that Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin were possessed by the Devil. He was among Vatican officials who warned that J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels made a “false distinction between black and white magic”.

He approves, however, of the 1973 film The Exorcist, which although “exaggerated” offered a “substantially exact” picture of possession.

In 2001 he objected to the introduction of a new version of the exorcism rite, complaining that it dropped centuries-old prayers and was “a blunt sword” about which exorcists themselves had not been consulted. The Vatican said later that he and other exorcists could continue to use the old ritual.

He is the president of honour of the Association of Exorcists.

Truck owners report being cited for everything from parking too close to curbs to parking too far away. Sometimes officers shut them down.

Why would law enforcement target taco trucks for nuisance violations?

Turns out nearby restaurants don’t like the competition.

Three-quarters of adults questioned in an online poll said they would sacrifice holidays, dining out, going to the movies and even shopping sprees but they could not resist buying books.

Dining out came in a far second with only 11 percent of Americans naming it their top indulgence, followed by shopping at 7 percent, vacations at four and movies, which was chosen by only 3 percent of Americans.

“The recession highlighted the downside of greed, indulgence and giving in to temptation, but we noticed a shift back to life’s simplest pleasures,” said Michelle Renaud, a senior manager at Harlequin Enterprises Limited, which conducted the poll.

The survey of 3,000 people tried to determine what tempts people to spend their money, how they react to temptation and how far they would go when tempted.

Sex was a main temptation for 50 percent of men, while for 56 percent of women food topped the list. The sexes also differed in their approach to straying. Half of men thought it was harmless to lust after someone other than their partner, compared to 33 percent of women.

“Our survey also revealed that one in four women (20 percent) and, shockingly, almost half of the men (43 percent) surveyed have been tempted to hook up with their friend’s significant other,” according to the survey.

The sluggish economy and high unemployment also seem to have increased competition and temptation in the workplace. Forty-eight percent of people admitted they had sneaked a look at a co-worker’s pay slip. Fifteen percent of men and 10 percent of woman also said they had sabotaged a colleague.

“It is very surprising the number of people who admitted they had done that,” Renaud said in an interview, adding that she believed it was due to the competitive job market.

An equal number of men and 8 percent of women admitted to taking credit for someone else’s work.

“We are so information obsessed right now that we are constantly trying to find out more, even if it is about our significant other or our colleagues at work,” said Renaud.

This video was recently uploaded to YouTube, under the name “Family Day In Montana”. All I have to say is God Bless America.

I wish my family picnic’s were more like this.

Guns are deeply rooted within Swiss culture – but the gun crime rate is so low that statistics are not even kept.

The country has a population of six million, but there are estimated to be at least two million publicly-owned firearms, including about 600,000 automatic rifles and 500,000 pistols.

This is in a very large part due to Switzerland’s unique system of national defense, developed over the centuries.

Instead of a standing, full-time army, the country requires every man to undergo some form of military training for a few days or weeks a year throughout most of their lives.

Between the ages of 21 and 32 men serve as frontline troops. They are given an M-57 assault rifle and 24 rounds of ammunition which they are required to keep at home.

Once discharged, men serve in the Swiss equivalent of the US National Guard, but still have to train occasionally and are given bolt rifles. Women do not have to own firearms, but are encouraged to.

I had intended to flee in broad daylight, but when you are going on the lam, there are a surprising number of last-minute errands to run. This morning, I picked up a set of professionally designed business cards for my fake company under my fake name, James Donald Gatz. I drove to a Best Buy, where I bought two prepaid cell phones with cash and then put a USB cord on my credit card — an arbitrary dollar amount I hoped would confuse investigators, who would scan my bill and wonder what gadgetry I had purchased. An oil change for my car was another head fake. Who would think that a guy about to sell his car would spend $60 at Oil Can Henry’s?

I already owned a couple of prepaid phones; I left one of the new ones with my girlfriend and mailed the other to my parents — giving them an untraceable way to contact me in emergencies. I bought some Just for Men beard-and-mustache dye at a drugstore. My final stop was the bank, to draw a $477 cashier’s check. It’s payment for rent on an anonymous office in Las Vegas, which is where I need to deliver the check by midday tomorrow.

Crossing the Bay Bridge, I glance back for a last nostalgic glimpse of the skyline. Then I reach over, slide the back cover off my cell phone, and pop out the battery. A cell phone with a battery inside is a cell phone that’s trackable.
Primm Nevada

About 25 minutes later, as the California Department of Transportation database will record, my green 1999 Honda Civic, California plates 4MUN509, passes through the tollbooth on the far side of the Carquinez Bridge, setting off the FasTrak toll device, and continues east toward Lake Tahoe.

What the digital trail will not reflect is that a few miles past the bridge I pull off the road, detach the FasTrak, and stuff it into the duffle bag in my trunk, where its signal can’t be detected. Nor will it note that I then double back on rural roads to I-5 and drive south through the night, cutting east at Bakersfield. There will be no digital record that at 4 am I hit Primm, Nevada, a sad little gambling town about 40 minutes from Vegas, where $15 cash gets me a room with a view of a gravel pile.

Keep Reading Evan Ratliff’s Adventure at: Wired Magazine

Watch one soldiers dog go crazy with joy when his dad comes home from Afghanistan. You can hear the dog make crying sounds.

“Worth today about 1100 dollars and I’m gunna try to sell it today for, oh I don’t know… 50 dollars. You might say I’m crazy but I’ll be willing to bet that none of them will take me up on that offer because most people are soo braindead.

They have no idea what money is worth, what gold is worth, or probably even who the vice president is. So lets find out if I can sell this 1 oz pure gold coin, bullion..for 50 dollars.”

John Nese is the owner of Galcos Soda Pop Stop in LA. His father ran it as a grocery store, and when the time came for John to take charge, he decided to convert it into the ultimate soda-lovers destination. Over 500 pops line the shelves, sourced lovingly by John from around the world.

John has made it his mission to keep small soda-makers afloat and help them find their constomers. Galcos also acts as a distributor for restaurants and bars along the West Coast, spreading the gospel of soda made with cane sugar (no high-fructose corn syrup if John can avoid it).

He has turned away big corporations like PepsiCo from his store many times. Telling them his customers could simply get a better deal if they went down the street where its usually on sale. When the Pepisco rep said “You can’t do that, your customers will demand that you carry Pepsi.” John reminded himself.

“I own my shelf space and I can do what I want.”