Remarkably, the tires are still under road-hazard warranty, which was no extra charge back when I bought them in late 2007. How often does that happen? The joke being that the tire would normally wait until just after the warranty expires to make trouble. I guess the tire couldn't wait that long to find its nail, so I escaped an auto repair shop without paying anything, which is as rare as rocking-horse dung.
As part of my daily scanning of Google News, I noticed today that the swine flu scare had the following consequence already, according to a roundup of stock news on Bloomberg: "Smithfield Foods Inc., the world’s largest pork processor, tumbled 12 percent to $9.04. Tyson Foods Inc., the largest U.S.-based meat producer, retreated 8.9 percent to $9.96."
A fellow I know seriously believes -- or used to believe -- that on the whole, investors in the equity markets behave rationally. I don't particularly believe that. This could be an example to buttress my case. Selling off pork-processing shares because swine flu, which presumably has been in pigs for a long time, has jumped to people? Sure, I can see that. Actually, what I see are brokers yelling, "They handle pigs? Sell! Sell!"
Orders aren't traded like that, but the mental picture is fun all the same.
During Dickens' tour of the U.S., his carriage was held hostage by a gang of roaming wild pigs. It was a major problem at the time, throughout much of the country. He--or it might have been someone else, it's early in the morning and I can't quite remember--wrote that the pigs had snuffled around the carriage all night, as if wondering how to best get at the filling inside the pastry.
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