The Ongoing Saga

2011-05-29T12:24:00.001-04:00

This came from a friend. Brace yourself for 'cute overload'. Mama cat senses her kitten is having a nightmare and draws him in closer to her.

2011-05-20T22:14:00.004-04:00

The missus and I spent the day on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls and among other things went to the Niagara Falls Aviary and met "Star", one very entertaining bird. Watch below.

and of course, the obligatory cell camera self-portrait...

2011-05-02T10:15:00.003-04:00

Yes, ladies and gents, you saw it here, for the first time, the Royal Kitty Generator! This is a picture of a cat magically being created from the stylish hat of young lady attending the recent royal wedding of William and Kate. (Truth is, this is a 'shopped pic of said young lady from my wife's friend who saw the opportunity and decide to have some fun.)

Enjoy!

Update on 5/21/11: Had no idea this young lady was in fact Princess Beatrice, granddaughter of QEII. Nonetheless, her choice of headwear has both come under great critical reception as well as high bidding. World is a strange place indeed.

2011-03-11T16:46:00.001-05:00

Priceless!

2011-03-07T16:32:00.001-05:00

Let me be very clear-- the new Dunkin Donut's Big 'n Toasty is the CRACK COCAINE of breakfast sandwiches.

You have been warned.

2011-01-18T14:25:00.002-05:00

After an entire life of thinking I was an Aries, turns out I am a Pisces. But I am on the cusp. So there is a constant struggle within me between being an oversexed egomaniac and an oversexed sissy. God, life is cruel!

http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/your-astronomical-sign.html

2010-10-08T23:25:00.000-04:00

Wow, this is exactly the sort of thing I was on about when I left Facebook.

2010-10-02T22:08:00.001-04:00

All,

After a lot of thinking about it, I have decided to close my Facebook account. This has not so much about privacy concerns regarding Facebook-ed friends or their friends seeing, for example, who I am friends with, etc., but around the use of data collected by "Facebook business partners" as well as the effects of what other Facebook users do, and what may or may not be attributed to myself or others who are my Facebook friends, as a consequence. The latest example is the "iLike" button, about which you can read here. Taking that as just one example, it is a commonly-held and often rightly-held belief that people who like a certain thing or hold a certain belief will be associated with those who also like that thing or hold that belief. But since with Facebook there are so many people connected to one another who often have never met or who have not seen one another for years, this is not a correct assumption. Yet some person's clicking of the "iLike" button on some web site will create a purported endorsement in the minds (or computers) or marketers or other buyers of Facebook-vended data that you may be in agreement with that product as a valuable thing or the ideas expressed by the article that some Facebook friend of yours has "iLike"d. The days when Facebook and indeed many other social networking sites were just ways to keep in touch with others for the price of having to put up with some pop-up or Google ads now seem to be behind us. Facebook and other social networking sites are now using our personal associations to find ways to stereotype us and gain information that we did not intend for them to gain. It also seems the management of these companies, like that of others, cannot always be trusted to admit when they are not playing by even their own rules. (one example from 2007 is here.)

It is hard for me to close my account since it seems Facebook has almost become a staple of modern life in terms of keeping up with others. However I think we have to all remember that there was life before the Internet and after the Internet, there was life before Facebook. If you want to get in touch with me via the Internet, there's always this blog and email!

2010-04-29T11:29:00.002-04:00

Me and the missus (and dog-child) on a recent walk. Spring is springing (or trying to) and I am glad to see the cherry blossoms are doing the best they can under the circumstances.

2010-04-21T21:14:00.006-04:00

I remember watching this series on PBS when I was a kid. My one thought: I am so glad I wasn't born in 1920... or thereabouts...

I have an observation about bomb disposal both back then and today: If you know the property is already destroyed, pretty much, or there are no lives around that need to be saved by disarming the bomb... then why do it? Just blow the thing up!

If anyone reading this from, say, I dunno, Afghanistan or Iraq, and who is involved in ordnance disposal, please comment. I'd like to know.

2010-04-20T12:12:00.003-04:00

http://www.fuckiceland.com/

Click the picture and watch the video clip.

Well I can't say I blame the Icelanders for this mess. Not their fault. But Iceland itself, the land? I mean, the actual hunk of real estate? If I were anyone in Europe, I'd say yeah, I am down with this sentiment. I would invite everyone in Iceland to come live someplace else where volcanoes don't threaten them with an ashy demise, tourist-trade and otherwise, and leave the place, which perhaps ought be re-christened "The Exploding Land", to its own devices.

2010-04-09T14:45:00.002-04:00

Preach on, sister!

2010-03-18T11:42:00.004-04:00

40-min audio from NPR's "All Things Considered", if you want a solid idea of what happened with the bond market meltdown and how certain people made a lot of money betting it would crash. There is also a lot of information about what exactly allowed the madness to exist and thrive.

Fascinatingly, the characters who seemed to have made the most off the bond crash do not seem to have been happy to discover what they did about it. In fact, the interviewee points out that they experienced serious health problems during the crash even as it was making them millions, if not billions, in profits, due to their fears that the crash would lead to public unrest, etc. But while I sympathize, it is somewhat limited. They can afford the best cardiologists.

Listen here.

2010-03-08T16:51:00.003-05:00

This'll bring back some memories for some of you...

2010-03-05T17:13:00.001-05:00

My latest demotivator, courtesy of a pic from the recent rioting in Greece...

2010-02-02T14:40:00.000-05:00

Cat predicts 50 deaths in RI nursing home

'Dr David Dosa, a geriatrician and assistant professor at Brown University, said that five years of records showed Oscar rarely erring, sometimes proving medical staff at the New England nursing home wrong in their predictions over which patients were close to death.

The cat, now five and generally unsociable, was adopted as a kitten at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Centre in Providence, Rhode Island, which specialises in caring for people with severe dementia.'

My kinda kitty. :)

2010-02-01T18:07:00.002-05:00

A time past. Yeah, past. I mean, seriously past. Seriously, seriously way past us.

2010-01-26T14:48:00.004-05:00

OK, so now Drudge was recently also going off about the budget deficit. Many people are confused about the deficit vs. the public debt. Well it's this simple: Say from my post of yesterday you know you owe in debt $63k but you make $80k/yr. All well and good. That $63k is your debt, and is the equivalent of our gov't debt in my "essay" of yesterday.

Now the "federal deficit" is the amount the fed. govt is overspending for any given year. So if you are making $80k and you actually have a budget, that budget would be a plan for spending more than $80k/yr. (If you are servicing $63k in debt, well, that'd be understandable, wouldn't it?) That is pretty much what we are doing here.

Wikipedia discusses the 2009 US Federal Budget here. For 2009, $2.7 trillion are the total receipts (est.). Total spending (est.) is $3.1 trillion, which assumes total "discretionary spending" is in place. So if all "discretionary spending" is spent, our budget deficit for 2009 is (was) $0.2 trillion, or 200,000,000,000 (ie, $200 billion).

Note under "Mandatory Spending", the entry:
$260 billion - Interest on National Debt

That is just over 1/4th of $1 trillion. Back to the 2006 GDP figure for the US of $16 trillion, that would be 1.56% [math: ((.25 * (1/16))*100)] of our entire GDP is being used to service our national debt. We pay only a very small part of our GDP to the gov't in taxes though, since we actually need it to... live on. This amt. of any nation's GDP being spent on bond-driven debt is just insane.

OK, now, back to "discretionary spending". Look at the list; does that look like it's "discretionary" to you?

No wonder there is further talk of "raising the deficit limit" on the federal government's budget.

2/1/10: UPDATE:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100201/ap_on_bi_ge/us_budget

'WASHINGTON – Spelling out painful priorities, President Barack Obama urged Congress on Monday to quickly approve a huge new shot of spending for recession relief and job creation, part of a record $3.8 trillion budget that would boost the deficit beyond any in the nation's history while only slowly beginning to put Americans back to work.

If Congress goes along with Obama's election-year plan, the nation would still end the year with unemployment pushing double digits at 9.8 percent and this year's pool of government red ink deepening to $1.56 trillion — by the administration's accounting.'

Honestly now, the math escapes me. I am not sure what to do with all these new numbers. I just know this: it's a lot more red ink than even I had at first seen.

----

And not to shift gears to fast, but did you see this?: WEF Security Officer Dies in Probable Suicide, District Says

I don't believe this for a second.

2010-01-25T18:39:00.004-05:00

Admittedly, I have come up with some real entertaining ideas. Recently though a friend of my family's whom we have known in excess of 20 years was "politely amused" at my suggestion that the US is facing some stresses that are potentially life-threatening for it, and that these are largely financial and of our own making rather than due to anything pressing on us from outside of ourselves. So in the middle of a software upgrade (which is like watching grass grow: 99% nothing and 1% doing something), I made my case. I decided to post it here since I have posted nothing of substance (unless you call videos substantial which... well, maybe they are) in some time. Here is a copy of my latest diatribe for those who care to read it:

Date: 1/25/10
Subject: Campbell on the US Fed debt and the next 40 years

Dear [Redacted]:

See http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Figures-on-government-apf-2178072020.html?x=0&.v=2

[In 000,000s]:
Total public debt outstanding Jan. 22: $12,302,465

That's 12,302,465,000,000, or: "12 trillion, 302 billion, 465 million dollars".

Now that is US gov't DEBT - just DEBT. The US's GDP in 2006 (ie, gross domestic product: all that we, the people and our employers, produced) was $16 trillion.

This current figure of $12.3 trillion is just what the US gov't OWES in debt obligations to all manner of other entities: foreign and domestic - via things like Treasury bonds. This is money our gov't has spent already and owes payback with interest on it - it is not anything we the people have borrowed though it is money our gov't has borrowed and oftentimes redistributes back to us in one form or another (no wonder the Chinese are so pissed). We are on the hook for it in any case via taxes.

Now this $12.3 trillion figure has NOTHING to do with US worker productivity or our GDP. It is ONLY a statement of what the federal gov't of the US owes to others, based on its own lending to pay for things like wars, welfare, redistributions of wealth to "non-natural persons" (eg, so-called corporate welfare, etc.), direct gov't services to states and to individuals, and so on.

So for perspective: Imagine you make $80k/year. Let's say that that $80k represents the $16 trillion the USA produced in 2006. Now let's say you owed total in all your debts (and we'll be generous and say we are excluding your house): $12.3 trillion. What %age of that figure would be of the $16 trillion? Answer: (12.3/16) x 100 = 76.88%. Now take your $80k/yr salary and do the math: $80,000 x .7688 = $61,500

So, you owe $61,500 in debt, even aside from your house, but make only $80k/yr, and of course you have lots of expenses you have during the year such as the mortgage, food, home and personal upkeep, etc. How do you keep up? Well if you can, you just keep borrowing. And that is what we are doing. And since we're a country and a very big one, it seems, no one wants to really say "No!" when in fact any bank would have long ago cut us off if we were just individuals looking to borrow more money again and again.

Now before you say this is not a good analogy because our sovereign debt stretches out over 100s of years (eg: Treasury bonds with a 100-yr maturity, and we keep issuing them), I just want to say that actually, we as individuals are not much different. In fact at least with sovereign debt there is a time the note comes due. With our revolving credit debt, we can easily use it until we die. Those are in fact better terms than sovereign debt. Buyers of sovereign debt are also betting that the country whose debt they are buying will be around when the note comes due. Well like anyone who bought Soviet debt found out, that is not always the case. (See http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=aapTzajNP0XI :
"Russia last month paid the last of its Soviet foreign trade debt, exchanging $406 million of so-called FTO debt for cash and Eurobonds. Russia plans to return this year to the international debt markets for the first time since 1998, when it defaulted on about $40 billion of domestic debt.").

In this position, anyone would say you are bankrupt, but since we are a big ol' honkin' country, we're "too big to fail". (That's what they said about GM, too, which did, in fact, fail, and they had the US gov't on their side - don't believe the press, GM did in fact fail). Well, the USSR failed. And so you wonder why anyone would suggest that the USA may not be able to remain together as a political entity "merely" because it is having cash-flow or debt problems? It was cash-flow and debt problems that brought down the USSR, not the ideological issues that some would have you believe were the cause. They just couldn't make good on their bills to anyone else or to one another.

Now re "falling apart" over money - well, people "fall apart" all the time over cash flow and debt problems. As you well know, they kill themselves over it. They kill wives and children over it, then themselves over it, leading to grisly "News at 11" reports no one wants to watch. Or a better outcome, they "merely" get divorces. Or maybe if they can do it, they declare bankruptcy and shunt from job to job, apt. to apt., relationship to relationship, trying to find someone to have some faith in them. But once bearing this modern-day Mark of Cain, always bearing this modern-day Mark of Cain. A person with bad credit is a burden, like a leper. They are never entirely trustworthy and no one should take too much of a chance. It's as bad for some employers as being asked to hire a convicted felon, yet one who was in jail over drugs or a violent crime.

The same thing is happening here but on a grand scale. No one wants to be left holding the bag. Did you see this off-linked from the reference on my earlier note re US state secession proposals?:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_secession_proposals

So why would one think then that where there are discussions of states splitting up ("Um, WE're not going to be stuck with YOUR debt!") or of the union itself (ie, the USA) trying to find a new way to organize itself so that it gets out from under the debt it created, that such is unrealistic or dramatic talk? In the past, nations have just become a new nation or new set of nations by pen-strokes and hopefully got some relief. (Alas this has usually led to war between themselves and their creditors, but not recently, as was the case with the old USSR - this only because they had nuclear bombs.) Creating a new currency has traditionally been the way this was done without busting up the country itself. The Germans did this at least twice in the last century, actually, I think, three or four times. But they also went through three different kinds of governments, too, and lost a really big war that they started. (Bad luck all around - for them, anyway. Amazing they stayed together at all in one form or another. Can't beat the Germans for this kind of stick-togetherness, really.)

So can the US do the same thing? Yeah, sure it can. Will it? I dunno. But the potential is there. We are only 150 years away from our famous Civil War. We are only 80 years away from the Dust Bowl and the New Deal (like it or not) whose existence arguably kept America from falling prey to revolution and becoming either a communist or fascist state. We are also a mere 50 years away from the 1960s and '70s that saw violent clashes and calls for armed revolution openly made in the streets, as well as political assassinations that we still discuss furtively.

[Actually, we have been coming down. We have gone from civil war to rioting/political violence, now just to the occasional demonstrating and rioting. Maybe there is some hope for us, at least in the civility dept. :) ]

Nonetheless, in answer to the question, "Gee, can what you suggest, American disintegration due to debt hardships and their associated problems, even be possible?", the answer is, yes, of course it is. More possible than a lot of other things. This is why I am not looking forward to the next 40 years, politically-speaking. But, I am hopeful, and I do love my country, for all its faults. I will hope and work for the best for it in all cases.

2010-01-22T12:51:00.002-05:00

"US Army captain ruthlessly executes without trial an HP All-in-One Model 5510 in the Middle of the Desert"

No jury in the world would convict him. I know.

2010-01-20T18:05:00.003-05:00

Categorically the funniest version of this clip from The Downfall I have ever seen, now used for fake-subtitling all over the world...

2010-01-20T00:29:00.003-05:00

I saw this and nearly fell over. Like a scent from childhood that makes you swoon sort of in a stupor, just thinking of the lyrics much less hearing the jingle nearly catapults me back via temporal vortex to my single digits. How exactly does one describe life experience before even the capacity to do so really exists in any way that is not purely visceral? Answer: You can't. You either get it or you don't.

2010-01-19T00:27:00.003-05:00

Found this freeware software that lets you dub over pictures and videos. So now, any hope of me ever getting anything constructive done is gone.

One of my fave (well, fave SFW ones, anyway) (de)motivators is this one with Capt. Kirk on it. I dubbed it some so yeah, that's my voice you're hearing. But most people reading this blog will not need to be told that. =)

2010-01-12T14:00:00.008-05:00

Brilliant. Find a horse that has no interest really in competing. He doesn't mind looking at horse-a$$ 70% of the race. But train him to explode on cue after the others horses have spent their energies. In the last 30% of the race, win by nearly a half a length, no doubts.

BTW, I don't condone horse-racing, for a lot of reasons, not just animal welfare concerns. I would make the same observations however about any race when seeing this strategy used, including races humans participate in. A lesson in here I suppose: Sometimes it's best even when "getting noticed" appears to be advantageous to bet the other way instead.

2010-01-04T15:14:00.001-05:00

I saw this and decided I had to make it into a motivational poster. It's too damn good.

2009-12-30T20:20:00.000-05:00

Funny, not as good as their others, but good enough. Really, '09 was so damn weird, nothing can do it justice...

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

2009-12-26T21:59:00.001-05:00

Even for me, who follows football only rarely, this is very funny. I don't expect anyone from upstate NY to fully get the laugh though, but still...

2009-12-23T11:55:00.001-05:00

Most of job looks like this. This is why I have the kind of take on our species' survival chances that differs from that of most others.

2009-12-02T12:53:00.006-05:00

Saw this on Yahoo! Videos yesterday and despite risking accusations of terminal cute-sopery, I had to post it. She looks so much like one of my own cats as she probably was as a kitten (too bad I missed that part).

This beats getting a reputation for posting porn, though. :)

2009-11-25T17:15:00.004-05:00

2009-11-17T11:37:00.002-05:00

Missing cat found... search called off...

2009-11-04T14:03:00.012-05:00

Brenda and I went to a local farm this past week-end that makes extra money as a petting zoo/mini-amusement center for kids. Needless to say, we enjoyed it a lot. :)

I took some cell vids of Angel meeting some new friends at the farm. Following are the highlights...

Angel Makes New Cow Friend:

Angel and the Alpacas:

Angel and the Black-faced Sheep:

Angel Meets (almost Eats) the Rabbits:

OK, and finally, this is me going down their "kiddie slide". The owner of the farm said a lot more adults go down it than kids. I can see why. That farm is just a beer license away from becoming a year-round Woodstock.

Farm entrance fee: $14. Snacks: $10. These vids: Priceless.

2009-09-16T12:34:00.000-04:00

Wow, 2,360 miles. I couldn't go that far even with the aid of cars and planes...

2009-09-10T11:20:00.003-04:00

OK, so not too long ago, I "discovered" this web site that lets you create your own (de)motivational poster-images on-line.

Of course, I simply cannot help myself. In the last 48 hours I think I have churned out 10 of these things. Most however are not that good or not fit for public consumption. >) Anyway, here's one based on current news reports. You know, if Jim Traficant runs for office again, I hope he wins. The man is truly entertaining and at least we're getting something back for our money with him (a good laugh or twenty). If I lived in his district, I'd be leading the "Draft Jim T for Congress" campaign.

2009-08-08T14:25:00.001-04:00

Well, you can't beat it for originality... or can you? The way I see it, the challenge has been raised. I see an opportunity here for a dance studio owner in New York to make a name by flash-mobbing Grand Central in a similar but even grander style. This is from Antwerp, Belgium, in Central Station:

2009-07-22T16:08:00.001-04:00

Batteries. Suppose one needs a damned Ph.D. in Physics to replace three BATTERIES??!

I replaced two AAA batteries today in a wireless keyboard. '+' goes one way, '-' goes another. Boom, you're done.

Batteries... batteries...

Spacewalking astronauts replace station batteries

2009-07-13T14:03:00.007-04:00

If anyone wonders what Brenda and I will be like in 20 years, well, watch these clips from As Time Goes By.

2009-07-10T19:16:00.003-04:00

I can't believe it. No, it's not the rejection. I was expecting that. I mean, really. But getting dissed over my DEGREE?? Um, excuse me, but I happen to KNOW that more than a few people have been on the shuttle now who had less than a degree in engineering! And to say my MSIS is not an engineering degree??? Umm, OK, maybe it isn't like ME or EE, but puleeze, does ME or EE fit into the 'classic' definition of "engineering"? Before computers there were 2 kinds of engineers: the kind that steered trains and the kind that worked in the engine room of ships. Now, there are all manner of engineers, none of which would fit into the classic definition. "Oh, they have a big math requirement," you say. Well yeah, they do. Guess what though: computer science stems directly from mathematics.

So I am 41 and have bad feet and asthma and get motion sickness. That's fine, diss me for that reason. But to say I don't have the right degree??

This will not stand. They'll be hearing from me about this, this, travesty!

2009-07-04T13:02:00.002-04:00

Could you pass the US citizenship test? I admit I missed two questions on this: who was president during WWI and the number of voting reps in the House. I should have known it would have gone up since I was in grade school since the no. of members is based on population and the US population has gone up quite a bit since then.

I saw Idiocracy for the first time last night. You know, we are not that far off from that world. Scary indeed. The movie itself though was dumb, even dumber than I imagined it would be. I confess I didn't make it through to the end. The opening 5 mins. were about the only part of it really worth seeing, and you can get that for free on MetaCafe.

2009-06-24T10:25:00.001-04:00

Good vid... lots to consider in it!

2009-06-17T13:37:00.005-04:00

I had to take a small roadtrip for work recently and on the way back stopped at a diner. This was kind of in the middle or nowhere. Anway, I saw this on the menu and thought it needed to be recorded for posterity, if not humor:

To be fair, the sentence did in fact end, but on the "next line".

Maybe they spotted it and decided to leave it just like that so as to give people a laugh? Maybe it's a kind of "guerrilla marketing"?

My life is sooo exciting! :)

2009-05-19T11:46:00.002-04:00

Dr. Who meets Catherine Tate. Absolutely hilarious!

2009-05-09T15:04:00.005-04:00

"Hello Kitty" indeed! This clip had all my cats running around trying to find that other cat they'd never heard before. >)

Talking Cat Says "Hello" @ Yahoo! Video

2009-05-06T14:00:00.001-04:00

This is long, but worth reading. Wonder if the poor guy'll ever touch another computer again. I wouldn't blame him if he didn't. It starts:

"I have been called the devil by strangers and “the Facilitator” by friends. It’s not uncommon for people, when I tell them what I used to do, to ask if I feel guilty. I do, somewhat, and it nags at me. When I put it out of mind, it inevitably resurfaces, like a shipwreck at low tide. It’s been eight years since I compiled a program, but the last one lived on, becoming the industry standard that seeded itself into every investment bank in the world.

I wrote the software that turned mortgages into bonds."

If that doesn't pique your interest, nothing will.

2009-04-23T12:12:00.003-04:00

Ah ha! I am not alone!

Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder

First read about it here.

So I should stop saying I am lazy. Instead, I'll say I have a disability and demand compensation from some government agency. Wooo!

2009-03-25T11:59:00.001-04:00

Ouch!

2009-02-20T12:09:00.004-05:00

OK, fun's over. You knew it couldn't last.

By end of this quarter I think we'll see a sustained drop to 7,000 on the Dow. At the end of 1Q things will start to get worse. That is because companies will be forced to reveal their 1Q results and it will not be pretty. It will be accompanied by more layoffs, especially from larger employers (*cough* ...automotive industry... *cough* *cough*).

In a previous post I predicted the bottom would be 5,000 and mentioned Howard K. had written that the bottom was 4,000. I still think the bottom will be around 5,000 but maybe a bit lower (4,500-5,000, leaning toward the 4,750-5,000 range). I have to admit that the current Dow level of under-7,500 is a surprise to me. I thought it would stay at or above 7,500 until the end of Feb. But it's true though to say that the current level is not yet sustained since it has only been there for the last 2 days, so I may be jumping the gun. Alas, my crystal ball is sometimes wrong (don't I know it!).

As for the Dow's further decline, what I think will happen is it will drop to 5,000 and then trading activity will stagnate like it did in the 1970s. Not a lot of trading, buying or selling, will happen, so values will stay the same. At the same time though inflation will have kicked in starting this summer when the banks that have horded all this gov't-generated Monopoly cash rush to lend it out of final acts of desperation to remain relevant. So the value of the USD will fall due to inflation but the prices of stock issues will stay the same. In short, cold comfort that those left holding these issues are "not losing money anyway". 'Tis an illusion. We're all going to be "losing money" when inflation kicks in this summer. When goods that cost $10 today cost $20 in November, that is effectively a loss of money.

As for timing, a sustained Dow level of 5,000 will probably hit by the end of this year, maybe as late as 1Q 2010, even as the Dow membership is likely to change due to Dow's own listing rules. (Some Dow listees are now below $5/share and they can't stay that way for long and still be on the Dow.) There it will remain until new companies or something else arises to stimulate stock trading. (I can't predict non-company-forming-like events that might affect this, sorry to say, such as political events, natural disasters, etc.) We may not see a return to reasonable trading activity until 2012. Some have speculated as far out as 2015 but I am not that pessimistic. I have faith that the people's memories are short and their hands are greedy. So, I feel it will send them back into the market earlier rather than later. But be forewarned, I wouldn't go buying now to "beat the rush". A lot of companies currently listed on the exchanges will not survive to see 2012, at least not without going private again and thus their public share values will fall to zero. And I have little faith the mutual fund managers have the wisdom to pick the survivors, too, so I'd think twice even before going that route.

Other things my $4.99 Halloween clearance sale crystal ball from Wal-Mart tells me is that precious metals like gold and silver will continue to appreciate but that the best way to hold these items is as bullion. The minting premium on gold and silver is higher than it has ever been since minting started in the US, especially on silver. The spot price of these metals also seems to be more volatile than the bullion price. This should tell you something-- that people have greater faith (ie, are generating greater demand) for the actual physical metal than they do for claims of right to it (which is what metals stocks and trust shares are). "Paper metals" as they are called are more volatile and require legal enforcement action if the issuers fail to produce. That's a lot to expect from a securities law enforcement apparatus that is already overburdened. So the greater faith is now found in possessing the actual metals. I see gold and silver being double their current value (which is already quite high) by 2010. I think silver is something of a maverick in that since it costs less than gold it is more likely to have a greater spike in demand but also a faster sell-off curve when the masses decide, for right or wrong, that it is safe to go back into the water. One cannot eat gold and silver nor live in it, so while metals are a good inflation hedge they tend not to hold their exacerbated inflation-created value for too long in fiat currency-dependent economic systems. Timing is king and when the time comes to sell metals, one shouldn't dawdle.

But these are "dangerous times", from a financial standpoint. Crystal balls are sometimes wrong. Each one of us has one. Sometimes we ask others what theirs say, but when it comes down to it, each of us has our own and must rely on it to guide us. As nerve-wracking as this all is for some of us, it beats wondering if we will live to see tomorrow's dawn. As Thomas Hobbes observed, man trades the insecurity found in the state of nature for the security found in civilization, but it comes at a price: unfettered liberty. Uncertainty about mere economic fortunes replaces uncertainty about personal physical well-being. All in all, this is a better deal.

2009-02-19T17:43:00.004-05:00

OK, time for some levity. The missus and I were parked on the couch last night and being that we are still pre-'70s in our TV technology (you'd think not, but no, for some reason, neither of us has seen fit these past 4 years to do anything other than adjust antennae. Of course that is rapidly going to end with the digital transition, but even I think it's kind of funny).

So, we have PBS on and are watching an episode of this series, about the British royal family and what they have to do to *gasp* earn a living (or at least look like it). Now on this one occasion, the president of some former African colony was coming to visit and had his wife and other entourage members with him. Well as it turns out one of them couldn't, for whatever reason, climb the stairs to one of the rooms they were scheduled to appear in and so of course, the palace has an elevator but it happened to be out of service for some reason at this critical moment.

Well the documentary cameras caught HM Queen Elizabeth II at the top of the stairs on the rather spacious overhanging landing on the second floor, at one point bent over the railing looking down to see what was going on on the first floor, probably with an eye to trying to resolve the embarassing situation that seemed to have arisen. Just as I saw this I had the perfect scenario go through my mind.

I can tell you this, if I had seen the following happen, it would have been just fine if I keeled over right then and there. My life would have been fulfilled as far as I'm concerned.

What did I want to see? I wanted to see (and hear) the queen curse like an immigrant former-Russian trade-unionist and bellow out something along the lines of "Jesus H. Christ, where the f*ck is the goddamn wiring panel for this mother-f*cker anyway?!? The goddamn fuses are all f*cked up and Lenny is a f*cking idiot and has no f*cking idea what the f*ck he's doing and we have to get this goddamned elevator working again!! I can't believe it, I work with a bunch of f*cking idiots, you guys are a bunch of useless f*cking a**holes!!"

This scene went through my mind in an instant and I began laughing. I almost fell off the couch.

I have to say I had a hard time explaining this to the missus. She saw the humor of course but it's one of those things that if you don't actually see it unfold in your head yourself, you probably won't be nearly as amused. But I do wonder what the queen would say if she were to stumble across this blog entry. Probably something like, "We are not amused!" :)

2009-02-11T11:55:00.006-05:00

Mr. Sunshine strikes again! Well I couldn't stay away for long, could I? How can you go on in life without your dose of dismal predictions and misery from this, your #1 FAVORITE blog? :) OK, here goes...

Read European bank bail-out could push EU into crisis

16.3 trillion euros. Now bear in mind the EU members' combined GDP for 2008 was US$19,195 billion, or US$19 trillion (see this). That's 14,723,100,000 euros by the current conversion rate, or about 14.7 trillion euros. So the EU collectively owes ((16.3/14.7) x 100)% of its GDP in 2008. That figure is 110.88%.

Imagine this for a minute as personal debt. Imagine you make $100k/yr. Now imagine you owe $111k in debt. And your assets, like a house or car? Let's assume you have assets but can't really sell them, as they are in trust. That's sort of the position the EU's institutions, as well as ours, are in, since the hard assets associated with the debts are either immovable or can't really be sold to pay off the banks' collective debts either because there are no buyers willing to buy or the banks can't or are not willing to sell the hard assets to raise money to do what-- pay off debts? That makes no sense when you need every scrap of whatever it is you have a claim to to keep you from going over the edge.

So you are $111k in debt and make $100k/yr. and owe payments on that debt. You have to make P&I payments at, say, an average of 10%. That's $11k/year in payments. But that is just for this one year's worth of debt. You also owe on past debts. Your actual total indebtedness goes back about 10 years, say, and you owe about that much in debt over the past 10 years. So your P&I is doubled to $22k/yr. That leaves you $78k/year to pay for housing and the rest of life, which if you have even one child, doesn't go nearly as far as it used to. And for giggles let's say you live someplace with a high cost of living. That'd be Europe, all right. You make that $100k in L.A. or NYC, not Rochester or Buffalo. Ouch.

Oh yeah, you have taxes, too. Just like the banks do.

I am sure it's worse than this. There has to be a load of crap I am not factoring in. But just imagine being just in this situation. People declare bankruptcy with lesser debt:equity ratios and get away with it. Or at least, they used to, anyway.

2009-01-28T16:22:00.001-05:00

I nearly fell out of my chair for this one: "Hitler Finds Out He's A Joke On YouTube"

2009-01-23T16:29:00.004-05:00

Since both Obama and the Chief Justice bungled the oath, it has been one guffaw and bad press moment after another. Suggestions from a TV relationship advisor observes that the First Couple uses fisting as a means of showing affection.

This one is sure to go down in media history: the first (and likely only) time the First Couple has been revealed to use fisting to maintain their close relationship. Hey, just how does she know they are doing that anyway? =)

I really do hope things start going better for us. I know it takes some time for the new staff and all to get settled, but the country can't afford too much settling-in time. The decisions our new president makes in the next 6 months will likely be the most important ones he can make as president, and alas, they are coming at the start of his term of office rather than after he has had some time to settle in and get some experience at being the president.

2009-01-20T12:02:00.002-05:00

Those of you with kids, be forewarned... losing it just a little bit could get you in serious trouble nowadays. Read here.

The key here is to completely empty all semblance if humanity from you when you get onto a plane. Become the perfect robot. Have no feelings and show no emotions. Be a compliant, obedient robot in all things. Showing even a little bit of annoyance is enough to get you in the Big House.

Obey... obey... obey...

Different topic... but a familiar one.

Seems things are worse in the UK. Read here.

Now remember the UK doesn't have the kind of fat on the calf the US has-- it has a much smaller economy and thus a much smaller cushion of failure should their fiat currency go south. Arguably though since they dovetailed onto the US and our way of doing things the last 10 years, they joined the same scale of financial mis-management with less protection. They figured perhaps if we here in the US were playing fast and loose that they would be safe doing the same and that somehow if things went bad for us they would only go bad for them on a similar smaller scale. Alas they were wrong. Instead it was more like a car trying to increase its milage by riding in the displaced air pocket created by an 18-wheeler. If the 18-wheeler crashes, the car near it will also crash. The crash won't be less-devastating because the car is smaller, but only more.

But on a happier note, our new president was just sworn in. I watched it here. His speech, which I am listening to right now, is very good and inspiring. But I just hope some of what he says will come to pass actually will. Let's hope this message of hope will become realized hopes. *sigh*, I try to be optimistic, but alas, I know, numbers just don't lie. I hope some rabbits can appear from some hats in the near future.

2009-01-16T11:07:00.004-05:00

Ugh, not a good day for retail. I blogged about this in November and it has come to pass. I get no satisfaction, trust me. Circuit City is closing down, selling off everything. Not that I ever went there. They were overpriced and poorly-trained. Besides, I could find what I needed on the web. However most people aren't like that; when they want gadgets they usually need to go to a store and CC and Best Buy are (were) the biggest gadget-dealers in the country. Now it's down to just Best Buy. This is nothing to sneeze at since it bodes very badly for 2009.

Speaking of ill omens, Bank of America is now just that. What are we waiting for, may as well convert the dollar to the ruble and give up all pretenses of a free market banking system. Rather than let the chips fall, we are instead deciding to go the road more-or-less traveled all over the world: when times get tough, authoritarianize. And CitiGroup? What are they even still doing listed on the Dow?

The US has lost any finger-pointing rights at this point. We've got nothing on no one.

But on a happier note, Sully for US Senate! I think Gov. Patterson can quickly side-step all controversy re the possible appointment of Caroline Kennedy by appointing Capt. Sullenberger instead.

2009-01-14T18:21:00.000-05:00

Hmm, he reminds me of a very similar-looking kitty when he was a bit younger...

2009-01-13T12:55:00.001-05:00

Speechless.

2009-01-01T23:51:00.005-05:00

Happy New year! I think... well, happy in the sort of usual sense.

*sigh* Putting lipstick on this oinky ain't working.

I'll let the Master of Doom do the talking; read here. Now this guy got a lot right back when 2008 was coming in; he was one of very few commentators on economics and society basically to call it right. This time he is saying he feels the Dow will bottom at 4,000. I feel it will bottom at 5,000. He has been known to be pessimistic while I have been known to be optimistic about these things. So maybe it's more like 4,500. Cold comfort. Some time in the past year I predicted (I can't recall if I posted it here on my blog or not) that the Dow would see 7,500 at some point. It almost made it that low but didn't actually stay there for long without heading back toward 8,000. So there, maybe we are both being too pessimistic and 2009 will see a low of only 6,000. That'd be better anyway.

Mr. K. I feel has the general trend correct for his 2009 predictions. Some details I will say he is speculating on because a lot of particular things can't really be predicted. For example, he can't, nor should he try, predict about stuff that is in the realm of dependent causes. Terrorist attacks for example, or the effects thereof, are not something he can really predict. General trends, such as "It looks like a big one will occur some time in the next 5 years," are entertainable. But to say "2009 is the year such-and-such a thing will happen," falls too much in the realm of prophecy and is, IMO, reckless. So I am glad he hasn't gone there. But for example his prediction that a kind of servant class of underemployed people will emerge and sort of begin to melt into the homes of their employers-- that is speculative and in the realm of dependent causes. So I feel he is going too far with that one.

Inflation - the last topic I posted on-- this I feel he has right. He ends this piece of his column with: "I'll forecast the that the US dollar is worth 40 percent of its current value by next Christmas." I agree, though I place it at 50%. Alas, 10% either way won't matter to the person whose 401(k) used to be worth a cool mill in 1972 dollars on Dec. 1, 2007 and then on Dec. 1, 2009 instead is worth a not-so-cool $230,000 because it lost half its value in 2008-2009 while the actual buying power of what was left dropped 40-50%. Is it worth $230k or $250k? The $20k difference isn't that important when someone who planned on retiring at 65 now faces the prospect of working at McDonald's in his golden years since he can't live off the 401(k) even with Social Security kicking in. And as for the 30-YO couple with two young kids and a non-retirement investment portfolio that has done the same nose-dive-- well, lots of plans are now on hold or out of reach, possibly home-ownership soon to be a thing of the past for them. Hard to say who is getting shafted worse, really. More like it's bad for both kinds of people but in different ways. At least the 30-YOs still have their health (or so I'd hope).

Housing - egad, that is just a mess. I saw on the news last night that 8 million more homes are expected to go into foreclosure in 2009. Now put that figure into perspective; 300 million people in the US, right? Imagine 30% own their own homes or live in an owned home (i.e., live there as part of a family and not paying rent). That would mean about 90 million people live in owned homes. Now imagine 30 million actual homes exist with 3 people on average living in each. Eight million homes foreclosed upon out of 30 million: That is 26% of all owned homes foreclosed on! And to think, how many million were already sunk in 2008? 4 million? This is just nuts.

Consider all those people now moving into rental units... the classic definition of a "serf" has always included one who doesn't own the land he lives on but works it anyway. "Tenant farming" it what it is called today. But back in the bad old days when monarchical aristocracy was the rule, the word "serf" was more freely used. Going from land-owner (home-owner) to renter seems like going from free-man to serf. I think it's an apt analogy though thankfully all the trappings of serfhood are not in fact looming. But to have so many people become detached from the future of their own domiciles so quickly-- it can't have a good effect on civility, that is for sure. (When I say "civility" I am not talking about please and thank-you, either, but more the behavior people show toward their own neighbors, their cities, whether they choose to vote or invest in the world around them, etc.) I remember when I rented I had no interest in my neighborhoods because I knew I wouldn't be there for long. I knew this because I didn't own the place I lived in. And while I was not the sort to dump trash in apartment building parking lots or wake up neighbors at 3:00 AM with noise or music, I had neighbors who did. Living in a largely-owned neighborhood later, the contrast is significant. The people in the neighborhood own their places so they take care of them and basically behave themselves, since the value of the property is affected by the quality of life of those who live near them. Renters, and I know from experience, simply don't have the same investment in the neighborhood that owners have. So all these people losing the basic motivation to be invested in the well-being of their communities and to act accordingly can't be good for the country.

I am not surprised by Mr. K's 2009 predictions. I just wish they were a bit less realistic. :)

2008-12-26T16:30:00.003-05:00

YouTube vid explaining how money in the US is created and its nature as a debt system rather than a value system. This, IMJ, is required viewing for everyone in 12th grade. But I doubt you'll see it (or anything like it) on a civics syllabus any time soon. In any case, anyone living during these economic times needs to understand the basic message of this video so they at least can have some understanding of what is happening around them (and what is happening to their savings) as our financial markets go through their gyrations.

2008-12-17T12:23:00.002-05:00

Rat-pucking as the new public works solution for Berlin? Yes, read about it here.

Alas that voice-over guy who was famous for lines starting with "In a world where..." died not too long ago. This is really too bad because he was fairly young, only in his 60s. Anyway, I have to give credit where it's due, because I say this: In a world where rat-pucking can even be suggested as a solution for rodent infestation and under-employment in a modern western country, anything, I mean anything, is possible.

Folks, I am really sporting tinfoil these days, aren't I? Or am I? I am going to say that the next Big Shock, aside from anything else that is too hard to definitely predict (natural or man-made disasters, etc.), is the "Big I Word": Inflation. We are headed to nasty levels of inflation. Are we looking at Wiemar Germany or modern-day Zimbabwe inflation? Probably not. But ask yourself this: if your buying power were effectively half what it is now this time next year, what would life be like for you? Not nearly as pleasant as it is now. And I think we may be looking at that kind of scenario.

Why is this? Because the government has few options but to run the presses. The solutions to the current loan mess are few. In fact, to keep more people from becoming homeless than the government can deal with, they must come up with a way to keep them from going into default on their loans. They can do this by ordering the banks not to foreclose on properties, and this would effectively be the final straw as far as our financial system goes. But they cannot allow 5% of the population to be wandering the streets. That is a recipe for chaos. So they will order the refinancing of all these bad loans to fixed rates (under 6% I predict, probably 4-5%) and tell the banks to suck it up. When they complain, the gov't will give them the money to pay their many obligations that they currently cannot meet. The result of all this is inflation. If we double the money supply, what happens? Today's dollar is worth half of what it was the day before the money supply was doubled.

But wait, it isn't that simple. If we were a nation of Vulcans, that is how things would go. But we are not a nation of Vulcans. We concern ourselves mostly not with what is but what could be. That "could" in times like this is driven largely by fear. It will not take a doubling of the money supply to cause a 50% drop in the value of the currency. Between the actual mechanical effects of supply v. demand, there are the psychological factors. As confidence in a currency erodes, the value of it also erodes. Simple example: if I print up $15,000 in "Matt Money" that has a picture of yours truly on it and go out and try to spend it, no one of course will take it. That is because there would be no confidence in my custom-made currency. So even if there is only a mere $15k of this new money around, thus it being much scarcer than US dollars, it would still be worthless. That is because it has no confidence put into it by the public. So you see what I mean here.

The key to planning for yourself and others when all this stuff is going on is not to worry too much about specifics, because these are determined by too many things that will happen that are not really predictable. What is predictable, though, is trends. The trend is toward inflation. The exact details and sub-mechanisms are to be determined but the basic driving laws around politics and economics are not different for the US as compared with anyplace else at any other time in history. People are people, money is money. And inflation is a-comin'!

2008-12-15T17:55:00.003-05:00

"So where is it all going? Someone has to be winning!" I got this recently from a coworker. He was figuring someone had to be on the getting side of all this money that is fleeing the market. After all, there is that whole first law of thermodynamics thing. Exactly what you'd expect from an engineer! :) But alas, the financial world doesn't live by the same rules as the physical world.

No. That is just it. The money is in fact disappearing -- into The Past. It is going back in time, as it were, to pay for the things everyone bought before it (the money itself) either existed or before it was even conceived-- that is what using credit is, spending money that doesn't yet exist. The problem is, we don't have enough of the stuff to pay The Past back. The Past likes to collect interest and we can't even make those payments. That is why we are defaulting on our obligations to ourselves that we created in The Past as we fail to meet the debt service obligations created in The Past for payment to The Past from here in The Present, which at that time in The Past, was The Future.

Get it?

OK, let's try to be a bit more linear here... if you think of the financial world as a boat and all of us as passengers, imagine this: the boat has leaks and that is to be expected, all boats do. We bail out the boat regularly to keep the bilge level tolerable. That is our ordinary borrow-and-repay analogy. Now imagine we decide to let loads of water into the boat for some bizarre reason. Who knows, maybe we think the boat will move faster if we do. Or better yet, let's say we think the boat will get bigger and better if we can quickly let in a lot of water, then pump it out real fast. So, we let in loads of water and then, after we see that this isn't working as expected, we then decide to pump it all back out. The problem is, the boat is now so heavy with water that we can't pump it out fast enough before the water line crests the top of the main deck.

That's the analogy to use. It incorporates all the right factors-- time being the most crucial to understanding what is happening to our financial markets.

But some people are indeed making some money-- shorts have been making money. However it's a scary game, shorting. It has its own set of rules and challenges and it is possible for short contracts to decline in value even as the shorted security declines in value. How? Repayment. The contract has to be honored. If a short-writer can't pony up, the contract loses value-- fast. After all, the short contract is only as good as the ability of the writer thereof to make good on it. Most writers of short contracts are, not surprisingly, market makers-- eg: brokerages, other financial institutions of various kinds (ones that are licensed to deal in securities-- and you wouldn't believe how many of them are), etc. And many of the biggest names of these are in serious danger, not just from their toxic CDOs but of course, because they wrote all sorts of short contracts they may not be able to cover.

So if you are having trouble getting your short notes paid, what to do? Go talk to the SEC. They'll get to you -- in about 5 years or so. Stand in line, pal, there's a long wait these days.

So this is the answer to the question, "How is it that so many different kinds of securities, pretty much all of them, can all lose so much value with nothing seeming to be up side of all this?" Based on the foregoing, the answer is: we are -- "we" who borrowed for our houses or private planes under crazed loan terms that required no real commitment to re-payment of principal. "We" who maxed out our credit lines thinking the fun would never end. "We"-- institutions and individuals alike. The past 20 years, and esp. the past 5 years, we have been living on borrowed money (and borrowed time) -- money borrowed from ourselves, the selves of the future-- and we can't pay ourselves back now that the future has become the present. Our chickens have come home to roost.

*Cluck* *cluck*!

2008-12-02T14:36:00.001-05:00

I got the low-down on that cookie-stealing bunny, right here.

2008-11-20T11:24:00.000-05:00

Campbells once again making the news! Woooo! :)

UNC students, twins pose for Playboy magazine

2008-11-19T11:38:00.001-05:00

2008-11-12T10:30:00.004-05:00

<smugness>I should chuck software and go into finance.</smugness> Read this:

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/081112/best_buy_outlook.html

I'd say it's optimistic to think we'll still see those big blue price tags and hordes of untrained, just-hired blue-shirted recent high school grads pacing nervously around on the floor for too long into 2009. My money's on them not making it past Q1 of 2009.

They're not alone, though. SBUX will survive, but they will never be the huge giant of overpriced questionably-obtained caffeine drinks they used to be. The only thing that will save them is the fact that they sell a popular but legal and highly-addictive drug.

In contrast, the only thing propping up the USD at this point is the fact that every other major currency is also sucking canal water. If it weren't for the fact that the EUR is falling even faster than the USD, we'd be polishing the shoes of visiting French businessmen right now instead of smugly continuing to make jokes about them. Speaking of which, here's one: This Frenchman walks into a brothel, and... :>)

2008-11-10T11:31:00.004-05:00

I was in Circuit City yesterday looking for a 5 volt DC adapter. Needless to say they didn't have it. The stuff they did have was marked 20~50% over what you'd pay on-line for it. The stuff they had on their "clearance desk" was priced 200% of market value at least. I thought, "This company will not live to see 2009. Not with the Holiday Season of Death and Misery we're about to stumble pitifully through." (Side note: the rest of mall was almost deserted, relatively-speaking. I mean, I could have played ice hockey in some places in that mall and no one would have been hit by a puck or probably even noticed.)

So today, guess what I read? This. Now apparently I have been out of the loop on Circuit City; this has been predicted for some time now, it seems. Even if, like me, you have been ignorant of this arising in their fortunes, you can still tell just by looking at them that they are toast. I will say the same now for Best Buy, as they have the same problem CC has. Only, they have it worse in that they seem to have loads of heavy stock that will be hard to store even long enough to dump it for 25% of its current price, as they also sell such warehouse-hogs as entertainment centers and large TVs. I also went into a sporting goods store to see if they had any weight gloves and I saw stuff that had been priced at $2000 now going for $800, like such absolute necessities in life as hybrid squat racks and 45-lb. bar and rack plates (how come no one sells the 100 lb plates? That is so dumb!). They also didn't have my size gloves or brand, either. (Again, the Internet has retail utterly pummeled.)

But today, I also saw this. I thought, "I recall those days. I mean, really, why go to grad school unless you absolutely have to?" That is what compelled me to go. That, and I had no marketable skills to speak of. Well, I had a few, but these were illegal to exercise. >)

I will also proffer yet more unsolicited advice re The Market. It's this: 'Tis not safe to go back in the water. Not at all here in 2008. I'll tell you why: Mutual fund managers make their dump or buy decisions in late 4Q of any given year. This means December, usually the last 2 weeks of the month. This is because they want to lock in gains and write off losses for the new year. So if you were one of these idiots, what would you do? It's a 4-letter word starting with "s" and ending with "l" with an "e" and another "l" in between them. Get it?

The current sucky prices not just for funds but individual issues (US Steel Corp is now trading at ~$34. In July, it was at almost $200. And US Steel is a time-proven bellwether of demand for industrial production) will decline as what's left of the money goes back into cash and bonds (and only certain kinds, too. Not safe to "just buy bonds" anymore. Elmer says "Must be vewy careful, huh huhuhuhuhuh...") So if you are in cash, stay there!

Caveat: If you are not yet in gold, go there only if you can actually collect the metal itself. Claims of ownership in gold and gold stocks are fine only as long as they are exercisable to collect the gold itself and also reliably managed. Aside from that, remember that all sorts of weird things can and do happen when a fiat system gets stressed. The US gov't outlawed the private minting of gold coins during the Civil War simply because the war's expenses couldn't be met by just transactions in gold bullion. And last century at one point they seized all the gold they could from everyone they could catch and outlawed the commerce therein for years; this was part of the recovery plan from the Great Depression and this new rule lasted longer than that. The same can happen now and there is reason to think it will not, simply because fiat systems are just that: inherently, they don't like competition from fall-back commodities like gold and silver.

We are in a large-scale 2-front war that is draining our economy, and at this time we can't get out of it, nor can we seem to stop through the usual means the financial meltdown me and millions of others have talked about now for months, if not years. The gov't will need to ensure that the USD remains valuable. The only way it can ensure that is to forcibly stop the commerce in gold and re-invent the currency. That is the plan. [I think that is also what our new VP-elect was referring to when he said that the new president will have to make some tough decisions in 2009 and his current supporters will have to stick with him. Also, I think it may be referring to the passage of the National Service Act (ie, the draft), but both remain to be seen.]

So getting some gold will help maintain the value of some of your savings as we head into a new iteration of fiat currency. But don't get too much of the stuff. Trading gold for goods is impractical and even dangerous when there is a severe depression afoot; people start getting irrational and in the history of the human race, murder to get someone else's gold is a classic motivation. So you might want to get some gold just to keep the value of a common currency some, but if you plan on getting your hands on (assuming you could) a large amount if it, be forewarned: You are making yourself a target for thieves, some of whom may be quite desperate for some kind of valuable currency and not beyond murder to get it. Think I am being alarmist? People murder all the time just to get ahold of some fiat money. Imagine what they would do for actual gold if the heat were on, if they had kids needing food or medicine? As for using a custodian-- keping your gold in institutions is fairly ensuring the gov't will indeed be able to seize it.

In times like this, when the actual medium of exchange is in danger, the value of things becomes truly apparent. At its core, no inert object holds any real value (ie, money, gold, diamonds-- all worthless when the chips are down). That is because the value of things is tied to what they can do to sustain your life and the lives of people that mean anything to you. For the most part the one thing all of us have that is true wealth is our ability to trade our labor or even our very presence (eg, Hollywood stars are doing this and making a good living at it) for something we need. Working for food. Having a skill that is needed and trading that for money, food, etc. To illustrate, if I have a mountain of cash and gold and live alone though on a desert island, is that cash and gold worth anything? No, not really. That is because it can't be used for anything other than perhaps as kindling for fire and to make weapons or tools that could be used to get something to eat. Which leads me to this point: If you can't stay alive, currencies/mediums of exchange are useless. Food, shelter, clothing, and love itself-- this is what people really need. They need other people for life to be meaningful or worth living ("One man is no man") as well as the other skills that others have more of, some of these skills being indispensable. When dumb stuff like currencies go ker-flooey, you quickly find out what is really valuable and what can really be used as an exchange medium. And I am not just talking about the world's oldest profession here, either. :)

So with all that babbled, I'll get back to my real job.

2008-10-30T14:54:00.004-04:00

Is it any surprise? Tell me there is no schadenfreude here:

THE BROKERS WITH HANDS ON THEIR FACES BLOG

2008-10-29T16:08:00.003-04:00

What would an electoral draw look like, I wonder? Well I found this and got to work and came up with this. Possible, yes? Then what? I am not the only one asking this question. It seems this is already considered in, of all places, our very own Constitution in the 12th Amendment. So if the matter of who shall become the next Nuclear Triggerman fails to be decided by the people, then it goes to the Congress.

Not to worry, then, Congress will take care of it. There, I feel better already. =)

2008-10-27T12:39:00.004-04:00

First week-end in a month not on any kind of pain-killers and let me just say I have little urge to abuse the meds. Amazing how truly whacked out that stuff makes you. I looked over some code I wrote in the past month and spent the whole of this AM turning it into something that someone may actually want to look at.

Speaking of gunk, the missus and I went to a 'psychic fair' on Sunday. It was all in good fun. We didn't get our palms read or anything but there was this vendor selling footbaths there. Yes, you read that right. Apparently these footbaths are rather special; they suck toxins out of your body via the feet through using negatively charges ions in the water. The idea is really very simple; bad stuff in the body tends to be positively charged and floating loose, since the body doesn't really want to hold onto it. The negative ions attract the positive ones attached to the bad stuff. Since we are about 90% water, the bad stuff just shoots through us down to where the positive ions are and out it comes through the pores of the feet. The picture below is what my footbath looked like after 20 mins.

Pretty disgusting, huh? So after returning home, I started surfing. I decided I needed to use one of these things regularly. The machines they were selling (of course) cost ~$750. Via the magic power of eBay, I found the same thing for $99 and promptly ordered it. I'm tellin' ya, how can you make money in a marketplace where all it takes is one jerk to come along and spoil your margins? I figured if spas and other such places were charge $20-$50 per session, it made a lot more sense to buy the machine rather than rent it.

Other than that, not much news to report. Oh yeah, the stock market is in the tank. But that isn't news to anyone who doesn't live under a rock.

2008-10-22T12:24:00.002-04:00

Saw this article on the propensity to take offense, give offense, and so on. Slate and felt it was good enough to post up here. It has a lot of good observations and draws for various POVs.

2008-10-21T21:36:00.006-04:00

Well it's been quite a past couple weeks. In the last three days of my honeymoon, an "old friend" came to visit and accompanied us back to the U.S.: my lower back. You see, at some point back in 2001 a disc slipped but after about two weeks and a surgical consult, it stopped being a bother. Now fast-forward to 2008. While I was enjoying my first 10 days of married life, the disc decided it wanted to slip some more. Only it did more than slip, it fairly went "on holiday", as they say in the UK.

The picture below is a phone camera snap of the medial plane body line MRI scan I had a mere 5 days ago. I added the red circle. This is pointing out the place the disc (L5-S1) should be. But as you can see, it isn't there. At all. In fact the only way you can see this disc is by an umbilical plane MRI scan (sorry, I didn't snag that one). It looked a lot like what happens when a kid piles on all sorts of stuff onto a hamburger at a picnic and then decides to squish it down to a size he can fit into his mouth. You get the idea.

So, for most of this month I have been using a cane to walk around and taking the kinds of pain killers I

Click the picture for a bigger view
hoped I'd never have to take, at least not until I was drooling on myself and talking to people I haven't seen in over 50 years, who aren't really there. So all I need at this point is a pipe and I'd look a lot like Henry Fonda. Anyway, today I had my first attack pass at this mess. It was an injection of lidocaine and some kind of glucocorticoid steroid (the procedure is discussed here). The short version is this: they stick a really sharp needle into your lower back and pump it full of dye contrast, lidocaine, and the steroid.

That's it. For a 1-minute (or less) procedure, it feels like it's taking an hour. And let me just advise you to do all you can to avoid being in a position in life where you have to pull your pants down and let 5 total strangers get a full and uncensored view of your butt without at least making them buy you a drink first. =) To add to it, they then pump drugs into your back and boot you out the door! It's either a really bad nightmare or a typical party scene at the Playboy Mansion, take your pick.

So, I am told I will know within the next two weeks if this procedure was successful at quelling this recurrence sufficiently or if "further measures" will need to be taken. Fun, fun fun!

I am grateful for this one thing though: I live in a place where I can actually get medical treatment, albeit not without some struggle with my insurance company. [Once I convinced them that I was both sincere in my expressions of discomfort and not looking for a goldbricking excuse, they became a lot more cooperative.] All over the world, people with a problem like this just plain have to live with it. How they do it now, and how they did it back when there wasn't much in the way of health care available, I cannot imagine. The idea of living day in and out with that kind of pain and nearly no way to reduce it is almost unthinkable.

And with that, I think I'll go back to bed. :)

2008-10-14T14:19:00.003-04:00

Good news, bad news. Good news is, I found my GPS! It had been hiding from me in my car. Bad news is, I reinjured by lower back somehow so now I am hobbling around on a cane until my MD and I can make a plan. I am hoping it doesn't entail surgery but if it did, I am glad to know surgery on the lower back has come a long way since my old man had his for a herniated disc (which I also have) back in 1982 or thereabouts.

I want to plug this product: http://gravitydefyer.com/ After seeing it in an airline catalog on our trip back from Mexico, I knew it was meant for me. I got a pair just yesterday and even with my current hip-pain from my disc issue, I can tell it makes walking and standing feel so much better. I can only imagine what sort of time scores we'd see in the Olympics for running events if these were allowed.

Oh yeah, "the market", of course: I am in nothing now but some metals. Nationalizing the larger banks (no such thing as 'partial nationailzation', just like there is no such thing as 'partially pregnant') will have a very bad effect on the value of the USD. Unfortunately there seems to be no currency-based safe haven, as the Euro has the same problem and the underlying currencies (the mark, pound, peso, etc.) of course do as well. What advice would I give if I were asked "Gee, what do you think I ought to do now with my cash?" Other than metals, I really don't know. But I'll think about it some. There may be some opportunity in some parts of the US to go into real estate successfully, but real estate isn't my forté. So I'll have to sleep on it I guess. But I better not sleep too long, not in this market. ;)

2008-10-09T16:00:00.005-04:00

This may well go down in history as the most miserable week in stock market history. The Dow was off 655 pts from opening not long ago. Here at close, the my non-delayed-reporting trading account says the Dow is still down OVER 600 pts. I remember a George Carlin (GRHS) comedy routine I listened on our old stereo record player (yes, wayyy back then...) where he did a joke-newscast. One of his lines was "The Dow took a little dip today as it dropped 600 points." The audience laughed. Well, when he said that he probably didn't think such a thing would ever happen. Well, it has. It happened today. As I sit here and write this at around 4:10, the Dow is still falling. (Trading information is still coming in, so the actual close value won't be reported for some time, maybe another 1/2 hour or so.) It is going south however, not north. Not even fluctuating. Right now it's down 675 pts! I can't believe it.

On a more amusing note, it seems I have lost my GPS/PDA. I am pretty sure I left it someplace public and someone has walked off with it. So while this is annoying it is not the end of the world and there are other fish in the sea. So I went fishing and decided on a model I wanted that fit my price range and what I am looking for in features. Of course one place I looked was on amazon.com. One of the affiliate sellers had an unusually low price-- but then I saw the shipping cost. Yep, it's that $155 shipping charge that gets ya! So I decided to order from a different source. =)

(Click picture for larger view)

2008-10-08T11:42:00.002-04:00

Rats, just missed the trend! Oh well, guess I have to make a living the old-fashioned way...

Confessions of an English gigolo

2008-10-06T23:07:00.000-04:00

Vindicated!

Sorry, Fido, It’s Just a Guy Thing

2008-10-06T17:37:00.002-04:00

Dear Readers:

That's a joke, sort of. Anyway, right to it: I said if I changed my outlook or allocations in this market I would promptly confess. Even as I write this, I am in process of setting SELL orders on damn near every pick I have. The market is now off the leash. Without a solid lending and credit basis for business, oil and commodities cannot even appreciate. Gold and metals stocks haven't done what they "should" be doing. [They are appreciating, but nothing like what they "should" be doing.] The market is, collectively speaking, behaving irrationally, and there are forces at work here that no single person is able to quantify -- by this I mean the impact of CDSs and other such beasties and the effect the failure to make good on them is having. So now is when I cash in my chips and wait for the madness to pass; I want to be sure I have some chips to re-enter the game with when people come to their senses.

When will this happen? Got me. Crazy is as crazy does. Could be any time between now and 2100 for all I know.

And with that, I join the ranks of so many others who tried to figure out this market but did not do so (at least not apparently, anyway). Stay tuned!

2008-10-05T11:09:00.002-04:00

OK, here they are: the magic moments... yes, I am wearing a kilt.

2008-09-21T16:29:00.000-04:00

Marcy Kaptur for President!

P.S. I got married yesterday. ;)

2008-09-19T11:36:00.002-04:00

All,

Seems Bernake and Paulson can't leave well enough alone. The problem with the idea of US taxpayers assuming the bad debt held by these various banks, brokerage/banks, and other entities for pennies on the dollar is that it still won't solve the problem. If the US sets up another SIPC-like entity, its purpose will be to assume the bad debt of once-mighty institutions. These bad debts they have are from the fact that the many bad mortgages they approved over the past 10 years are not getting paid, so they themselves can't make good on their promises to pay other creditors and holders of mortgage-backed bonds that they issued. To lose this bad debt, they will pay the new proposed gov't agency a few pennies on the dollar and the agency will then assume the bad debt. Those owed the money will now have to go to that agency to get payment, and since it will be a gov't agency, they can simply say "No." (Try suing the gov't to get money it owes you. Good luck.) So what is planned here is simply a huge fraud against not just the taxpayers who will be on the hook for literally TRILLIONS of dollars (not the few billions of the S&L bailout days, but *trillions*-- the total debt is $26 trillion. Consider the US GDP in 2006 was $16 trillion, and that puts it in perspective for you). Not that all the debt these entities have is bad, but a substantial amount of it is, with more to be added as on-the-edge mortgagees will think they can forego paying their mortgages and just stop trying to. So while the big institutions like Morgan Stanley and AIG, etc., will somehow magically survive and not be held accountable for their insanity of the past 15 years, everyone else who is owed money by them will in effect get the shaft-- who knows, they might be lucky to get 5 cents on each dollar owed them, and that will require taxpayer largesse (at gunpint of course) the likes hasn't been seen in decades, perhaps ever in the history of modern finance. And who are these other institutions? Smaller banks, other corporations, international institutions, foreign governments, basically, everyone else. It is these other entities that we the people are in closest contact with and rely on for our economic solvency.

So it is easy to see that they, the institutions in trouble AND the gov't, would be acting contrary to fiduciary trust and malfeasantly. In short, what they are suggesting is criminal. But since they make the law, well, guess it isn't. But they don't make the law-- Congress does. To create this new "agency", they need to get Congress to pass a law permitting it. If they are allowed to do this, we the taxpayer will be saddled with a degree of debt and a general economic burden that will be hard to come out from under in the lifetimes of anyone able to read this. In addition, America's financial reliability will be seriously downgraded all over the world, negatively affecting our ability to conduct business on a national and international corp-to-corp level for decades to come. In effect, our collective credit rating in the context of the world will be downgraded badly-- worse than what happened to AIG, I can assure you. We will be blowing the "full faith and credit" part of the deal that fiat money systems require.

A new agency is not the solution. What is? Let the chips fall. Because guess what, they are going to fall anyway. This new plan will postpone the day of reckoning maybe by a few months (coincidentally *after* the Nov general elections) and the debt will only get worse, as the instruments that embody the debt are all time-based.

Contact your Congressoid and let him or her know that if they vote for this kind of solution, you will vote for their opponent in the upcoming general election. But you must act fast-- they plan on voting next week as early as possible on hastily-crafted week-end marathon legislation that will create this new agency and stick it to us yet again. Do NOT let them do this to us! Go to http://www.house.gov/ and find your Congressoid's email, phone, fax, whatever information and let them hear you say "No! Not on my watch!" I suggest not just contacting their office in Washington DC but also their regional offices where they are sure to pay a bit more attention to you.

2008-09-08T23:22:00.005-04:00

Oil, gold, and commodities-- still there, Matt? Yes. Still in? Yes. Still think there's strong upside? Yes. Holding? Yes. If I decide to bail I'll be the first to admit it. But I think we are far from bailing-mode. I mean, the US would have to get a whole lot of cash from someplace, and I am not sure sovereign wealth funds from Dubai and other such places buying up our historic sites are going to be enough to cover the losses.

Mainstream press doesn't want to say it, but some commentators are: the takeover by the US gov't of Fannie and Freddie is a major move toward nationalizing the banking system-- whether they want to do it or not. We complain about other countries doing this, but here we are, taking Step One. The Next Big Step will be to go from conservatorship to receivership. This is like going from being a 1-cigarette-a-day smoker to a 3-pack-a-day smoker in one fell swoop, with the same implications for one's health (financial, in this case). Will the gov't do this? I think so. Reason being, the stock values for Fannie and Freddie are already down to pennies on the dollar, and the housing foreclosure trend shows little sign of abating. The big holders have lost their shirts and they seem unlikely to be able to do anything about it; in fact, they appear o be totally M.I.A. But the real bag-holder is the US taxpayer, who will be "paying" on this little move for the next 100, maybe 200, years, along with paying for our various endless wars in the Middle East. [For those who may not know, receivership is the gov'ts way of saying to a corporation: "You are bankrupt. You don't want to admit it and file Chapter 11, fine, so we will force it on you, at gunpoint if necessary." Receivership is a corporation's eulogy.]

I don't need to go over all the same stuff the mainstream media is now discussing about how important Fannie and Freddie are, how much we depend on them for mortgage loans being available, etc. The factor working against these two giants of neo-feduciary quackery, and thus against all of us, is time. US mortgages have a lot more defaulting to do. The more they default, the worse the financial situation is for Fannie and Freddie (and us). The gov't, placing them in conservatorship, is saying "You have screwed the pooch, thus you won't make a move without clearing it with us first." Only I'd like to point out that they have chosen two veterans of the banking & finance industry to take over these institutions. Um, aren't these guys from the same cadre of brain-donors* who got us into this mess? Frankly I'd be more down with this idea if they placed Perkins from fifth floor Accounting over at the GSA in charge. I mean, after what these pack of mini-car-driving circus clowns have done, just how much worse can a gov't accounting bureaucrat be at running a pair of multi-trillion-dollar banking and finance institutions? Not much more.

I am going out on an even longer limb here and am going to discuss the Nov. election. My prediction is simple: Palin will bring in the other 5% of the popular vote that McCain needed to get the last three or four states in play. He will win the election. (As an aside, I think that Sarah Palin will probably be the first female president the US gets-- but not for another 4-8 years). What this means for US fiscal policy is that for the most part, things will continue as they are, only any controversial moves that have been delayed due to the timing around this upcoming election will be taken, including placing Fannie & Freddie in receivership. I also happen to think the US will finally attack Iranian nuclear facilities, probably some time in December. I am not sure what the immediate consequences of that will be, my crystal ball is fuzzy there. But the key point is that as far as mortgage messes and inflating the USD goes, it'll be more of the same. As for the recent EUR move downward vs. the USD, and the dropping of oil prices, again, you have the election timing to thank for it. The powers that be know that in order to keep a rich-people-friendly administration on Pennsylvania Ave., they need to check their greed just long enough for the sheeple to find the extra two feet of rope they need to hang themselves, and indeed, it'll happen. Oh and for the record, I will not say I liked the idea of Obama winning, either. He seems very long on ideals and very short on actual plans. And it is true to say that McCain and Palin have more experience running ships that Obama has-- in Palin's case, a lot more, relatively speaking. So I am no fan of either ticket, but for different reasons. (We have a serious leadership crisis in this country and indeed, I could say it is a world-wide leadership crisis. But that's a topic for another post.)

So that's the latest of my yarns spun onto a blog page. Hope you had fun!

---

* Would like to direct your attention to this post. Note the following:

"But they're not going to trust that money with just anyone. So they've replaced the companies' CEOs — the guys who led the firms into risky investments and failed to react swiftly during the first rumblings of the subprime-mortgage meltdown — with new ones: Herbert M. Allison Jr., the former head of retirement-plan manager TIAA-CREF and the finance adviser on John McCain's 2000 campaign, will take over at Fannie; and David M. Moffett, a former Carlyle Group executive and vice-chairman of U.S. Bancorp, will take the reins at Freddie."

A key McCain campaign insider is taking over Big Monster Bank #1. A former Carlyle man is taking over Monster Bank #2. Those unfamiliar with this bastion of Illuminati brotherhood can read about it here. And just who in our current political history have been members of this group? You guessed it! As if prevailing upon them to make the sacrifice of investing heavily in defense department suppliers and requiring their advice and input on state matters, GW has also burdened them with the back-breaking duty of assuming fiduciary and operational control over Freddie Mac.

Man, my heart goes out to them! It's rough up there at the top!

2008-08-29T13:59:00.003-04:00

OK, McCain's new VP pick... let me suggest that perhaps his staff did indeed notice the resemblance between her and Mary McDonnell, aka Laura Roslin from the new Battlestar Galactica series.

Mary M. and Sarah P.:

Tell me, just tell me, this escaped their notice? Is it a coincidence the two could be twin sisters and BSG just happens to be the most popular TV show ever produced? Is it a coincidence that "Laura Roslin for President" bumper stickers sell so well *and* McCain's running mate just happens to be her spit-and-image?

Don't think so.

2008-08-19T19:04:00.004-04:00

'nother one for you. This one gives me hope. I mean, if LL Cool J can be nerdy, well, it doesn't make the rest of us look quite so bad! :)

2008-08-19T16:10:00.003-04:00

I saw this Sunday night and nearly fell off the couch laughing. In fact it may well be the funniest cartoon scene I have ever watched. Enjoy!

2008-08-11T12:27:00.001-04:00

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26116598/page/2/

"Saakashvili later drove to the outskirts of Gori, a town where scores of people were killed in an Russian attack Saturday. He was joining French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who had just completed a tour of the destroyed buildings."

I feel so much better knowing the French are on top of this.

2008-07-22T10:48:00.001-04:00

2008-07-16T13:26:00.001-04:00

God, this is hilarious!

2008-07-09T11:32:00.004-04:00

OK, one last time. In case you didn't get it the first time. Or second. Or third, or fourth... I am also taking the unprecedented step of disclosing my current picks. These are not suggestions/advice/more legalese, just provided FYI. Before going there, though, read:

Housing market slump seen stretching further
and
The worst may not be over on Wall Street

OK, now, here goes:

FSAGX
GLD
GOLDX
FXE
MERKX
XLE
CEF
DBA
DBC
DBE
DBO
EEB
USO
WTIBX

I'll refrain from saying what percentages, etc. But most ordinary investors (like myself) have little or no idea that yes, they can get in on oil, etc., without having to buy or deal with futures as such and the details associated with it. Consumers are on the paying end of this mess. As an investor, it's much better to be on the selling end. If you're paying 2-3 times as much for gas this year than 2-3 years ago, then don't you think it's wise to offset these new costs as much as possible by getting into the selling end of it? To me, it is an easy decision. Same for other commodities, too, like grain, corn, etc.

Update: Read this. Frankly I think this is a terrible thing to be doing but really, what else can we do? The dollar will, IMHO, take a huge beating for this move-- unless the EU decides to follow suit by some measure and so keep the EUR and USD roughly at where they are now. They would have to devalue the EUR to do this though, possibly quite radically, and so hurt their own trade with Asian countries and the Middle East. Spanish and French truckers are already protesting and blocking borders, so what would a EUR devaluation due to their already really bad situation? There is no good solution to this problem. "No exit," as it were. This is just a really bad situation that will just need to play out. Of course gov'ts can do things to lessen the damage but they have to be right at damn near every turn, get the timing just right, and know exactly how much to intervene. Those are big odds for anyone walking up to this table.

2008-07-03T16:13:00.001-04:00

I love this girl. She is absolutely the limit!

2008-06-30T16:07:00.001-04:00

The director of an aquarium and the ops manager were checking the place out one day after some renovations. The ops manager upon coming to the dolphin tank remarked "We put in a D-67 TurboMax Aerator last week-end but you know, I've been thinking about it, and I am not so sure it'll be strong enough."

The director, who had 20 years of ops experience behind him, asked "Well, was it the D-67 'A' or 'B' model?"

"'A'," replied the ops manager.

"Hmmm," mused the director. "I think the D-67 A will be sufficient for our porpoises."

=)

2008-06-24T22:54:00.001-04:00

Does anyone believe this? It's totally implausible. I think the Israeli cop came across an assassin and got into a quick-draw situation and lost. And I think the fact and identity (if known by Israel) of the assassin(s) is being kept mum in order to avoid a WWI-type scenario. (Remember that? Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated and all hell broke loose. This is not a lesson lost on Israel or anyone else)

One of these days, it's not going to work. There won't be any way to keep it hush-hush.

2008-06-24T19:27:00.003-04:00

So in the not-so-distant past (like, this past week-end), one of my regulars asked me, "Why haven't you posted?" Well, this is flattering-- glad to see someone is reading out there! So she said, "Post something", so here it is. It's a big shout out to my home-g Sandy herself, the one who said, "Where be the post, yo?" I say, "Yo, home-g!! Thanks for the top-dawg work on the ring recovery!" Yes, she found a ring my fiancee had given me that I had misplaced. So she gets an extra-special "Yo!"

Otherwise, not much to report-- I know that sounds dull, but such is life. Not too exciting but that's kind of how I like it. :)

2008-05-16T17:44:00.002-04:00

"Psycho-kitty, q'est-ce c'est?"

2008-05-03T18:24:00.000-04:00

http://frakkingtoasters.com/

2008-04-28T17:07:00.002-04:00

I feel like they made this just for me!

2008-04-23T15:37:00.007-04:00

This particular diatribe is inspired by the current euro:dollar battle mixed with the dependency on inflation and interest our money system has.

Take a look:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=FXE&t=5y&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=
Of course this URL is relative to the current day, so use the date range: 4/23/03-4/23/08 to see the numbers I am starting with. FXE started though only 28 mos. ago so that is all you should see data for.

For those who don't know, FXE is the symbol for the Euro Currency Trust account traded on the big exchanges. Basically by buying shares of it in dollars, you are buying euros. So one need not go to Forex.com and waste money on commissions just to get into euros. Since just the inception of the FXE trust, the euro has appreciated against the US Dollar an average of 1.3% per month, over 26 months.

FXE exchange: $120 in Jan ‘06 --> $158 in Apr. ’08

Well it was worse in post-WWI Germany but for the US, it’s still pretty bad!

But to get a more detailed range, go to http://www.oanda.com/convert/fxhistory (Open this in a new window so you can look at the data and keep reading this here piece of economic brilliance!)

Back on 4/23/03 it was .91 EUR:1 USD. Today it’s .63:1. Over 5 years, the dollar has lost the equivalent of .28 of a euro in value as compared to one euro. Think about this. If the trend continues, the USD will be worth nothing as compared to one euro-- in about another 12 or so years. Over 5 years then, or 60 months, the USD has lost on average .6% (or .6/100) of its value per month against the euro, calculated progressively. The big picture though is this: Over 5 years, it has lost nearly 31% of its 2003 value.

Whew, that's a lot of Gitanes and souvenir fake crown jewels, not to mention hotel stays and gorgeous views of the Riviera. [Trans-Atlantic tourism cannot be doing well as a result, at least not for overfed, loud Americans in funny shorts. Do you think the French miss us? I think so. I think aside from tourist dollars (euros), they got a vicarious kick out of watching fat middle-aged Americans look clueless and ask for directions in a totally wrong language. I mean, the entertainment value itself is priceless, and they got all that AND made a living off of it!]

Now of course we know this falling-to-zero-value is not going to happen. But it should give you some idea of just how fast and dramatic the drop has been. A .6% progressive depreciation per month doesn't sound like much until you watch it go for 60 months. Now you're talking turkey.

It's worse though when you look at just the last two years, 2006-2008, just 3 months less than the life of the FXE trust. The rate of depreciation of the USD v EUR has been increasing over the past 2 years.

But even if you just look at just the last 5 years and ignore the higher rate occurring over the last two years, a roughly 7%/yr. appreciation vs. the USD of any currency over just 5 years is not good news. It’s almost unheard of. In fact, I think it may be. [Possibly the 1970s saw something akin to this but that was for different reasons, I believe, and none having to do with either faith in the currency or the “petrodollar effect”.]

Bear in mind too I am not including inflation as a factor since the euro is also a fiat currency. Recently the euro’s inflation rate has been very high, almost 3%, and while it seems like it would make sense that this fact undercuts its value, and indeed it may well do so for consumers in Europe, it boosts its value v. the USD for a lot of weird and esoteric reasons. But the net result is the same for the average American consumer: If you were in Europe sitting there with a bunch of AmEx traveller’s checques, I’d suggest you exchange them for local money ASAP, as they are just sitting there in your passport case losing buying power.

But what does this have to do with the US? Well, we buy stuff from and via European nations. If their money is worth more but what folks there are getting paid (or businesses able to buy) is staying the same vis-a-vis the actual currency they have, their money is in essence worth more than ours, so they are charging more today than yesterday, even though the nominal prices stay the same, in order to make profit—or else not sell to us if we can’t meet the price. So if they cut their prices, they lose their margins, and of course, we hurt, since we already are stressed to afford whatever it is they are selling, and not getting the stuff we want. Strangely then, as recent history with the Chinese yuan has shown, it can often be to a country’s advantage in a sense for its currency to be less valuable that that of its trading partners. However for the individual citizens within the country? Well, things not so good from that point of view.

OK, so now that I have ruined your day, keep reading, as I am finally getting to my “Magnum Opus”, posted on Sunday... read the next entry below...

2008-04-21T11:52:00.013-04:00

So it has been some time since I added an entry here on my blog. Some of my most faithful blog-checkers [and you know who you are! ;)] have been coming to this site looking for a new entry now for weeks only to be greeted by nothing new. Sorry to disappoint. I am not a blogger by nature. I set up this blog largely for former coworkers to help them keep up with the odyssey of my relocation to upstate NY. It's been almost 3 years now since that so really, the actual purpose of this blog is really exhausted. But "let's don't" allow that to stop me! Ahh hahha! I am unlikely though ever to be a daily blogger type of person. But there are some updates I suppose I should get out there.

One is, I am engaged. Yes, you read that right. Mr. Bachelor is engaged. The wedding is set for late Sept. of this year. The very nice lady I have conned into, err, proposed to, heh heh heh, and I have known one another for a very long time. We got back together (we had been college sweeties) about a year or so after I moved back up here and one thing leads to another, as they say. So that's news. Not much else really but hey, one momentous burst at a time.

Announcements done, I can start talking about stuff only 1% of the population really cares much about. That is, economics, mathematics and temporal studies. Now if I have lost you at this point, that's OK. I often lose myself. The concepts here are not that hard to grasp and may only require a few visits to the psych ward. Be assured though you will see no heavy math of any kind. This is because I don't know any actual heavy math. But check back in 20 years, maybe then I can do something with it.

So here goes...

[Executive Summary: Fiat money’s value is not based on its relative value to other things but on the speed with which its relative value to other things changes.]

It dawned on me this past week-end of why our money will always be losing value. That is, why inflation is inevitable, with deflation being the exception and not the rule. I realized that the reason is obvious once you start seeing time differently from how others see it.

Time is the enabling portion of our experience; it allows events to take place. Without time, nothing could happen, as the very nature of cause and effect require the passage of time. But the thing to bear in mind is that there is no such thing really as a future or a past. There is, as the Zen priest said, only the present (he wasn't alone in this, either. A lot of old dead guys with funny robes have said or written this.) The reason there is no "future" is because the future as we perceive it can only exist as a fleeting "present" ("present" gets quotes because the present is never “the present,” but always the immediate past. And so if "past" gets quotes, so does "present".) What we actually have is an anticipation of an imagined, non-existent, not-yet-experienced, "now" being different from the the current "now" some time later (“later” being a word denoting anticipation, a current state in the “now”). "Now" is always "now", but is also always changing. Don't let the use of one word to describe many of itself to throw you off. There is only a now. The past is a force only insofar as "former nows" have left things a certain way (i.e., those "now"s held what we call causes, with the effects being in the current "now", and the current "now" being the immediate cause of the next "now", and being perceivable by humans as the force behind the "nows" that we anticipate will appear at some point). This includes the state people are left in, with memories, emotions, etc.

Got it? OK.

So now (no joke intended), we link this to money. This is where the math comes in, but as I say, only conceptually. This is the kind of thing calculus is used to express-- not values but rates of change. I will spare all of us this exercise though in even attempting to write an accurate calculus-based formula but instead just stick to the concepts. I'm a real concepts kinda guy; this is a polite way of saying I can talk about higher math and generally get the idea, but have trouble actually doing it. :)

Our money system is based not on the amount or availability of something tangible and considered valuable, like gold or silver. These metals are objects that consist of themselves; they have no temporal dependency. A kilo of gold is a kilo of gold, provided it isn't destroyed by melting or whatnot, 10,000 years ago, now, and 10,000 years from the current "now". Its utility may change over time as the demand for it changes, but the gold is still the gold. This is why despite the vast increase in the goods and services available to be bartered using metals as a medium of exchange, a lot of things valued at x amt. of gold or silver are still valued at that same amount today as they were in some cases, centuries ago, in the places where metals are still used as an exchange medium. The metal doesn't change since it arises from the stuff all around us. That stuff can be measured without resorting to time or the passage of time. Fiat money however cannot be measured by anything except the anticipated future demand for it. As the anticipated demand changes, so goes the current value of the money, expressed in the interest one may charge for it. To lend money and charge no interest is basically to say the money has no value. This is why only under the bizarrest of conditions will you see fiat money lent without interest, and only by the originator of the money (this happened in Japan in the 1980s when they had a severe currency crisis), whether that be a central bank (such as the US Federal Reserve) or the government itself (such as the Treasury department of some country). The trick being played though on us (and with our consent I might add) is that there is no future value of fiat money, only the anticipated future value of it. This changes the current value of the money as expressed in buying power and rate of interest. To say that the stock market is a "leading indicator" is really not correct, since the same kind of thing is going on there as well. The stock market reflects the value of the stocks (expressed in terms of money) in it, not in future or past, but in the present, and only the present. Thus the stock market’s current value does not represent any "future value” of itself—not ever. And likewise, fiat money is valuable only for what it is "now". But since we have set up a system of money wherein something that does not really exist (i.e., a future) is the basis by which the value of money is set gauged to itself (i.e., fiat money is valuable only because you can get more of it later by using it for loans or as a means of purchasing something that generates an income, such as something that gets you more money-- a “capital investment”. Thus the profit gleaned from transfer-of-goods/services and interest-on-loans is essentially an expression of the same temporal dependency principle in action), the only way money can be valuable is if it slowly loses value over time. That's right, you read that right. Here’s how:

The universe, being a closed system, with demand and supply being a zero-sum game, as it were, the amount of stuff one can buy or sell doesn't change over time. It was the same 100,000 years ago as it is today as it will be in the year 1,000,000 AD. Forms change. Populations change. Needs and priorities may change. But the actual 3-D stuff doesn't. What changes? The "now". The "now" is always "becoming", never static. But that's all. And that change can never be captured really since it is always locked up in the "now".

It's OK to reach for the aspirin. If this stuff isn't giving you a headache, then you're not probably not paying attention.

So the amt. of stuff doesn't change but the money, in order for it to be valuable, has to be valuable relative to the demand for it. That is why you must charge interest in order for money to be valuable. But as the amt. of money that exists increases (i.e., interest on the money), and the amt. of stuff does not, then the only thing for money to do is become less valuable. It's Eco 101-- as supply increases and demand remains static, value goes down. So it costs increasingly more money to buy stuff since more money is appearing out of thin air in the form of interest. Again, interest is an expression of the degree to which money is in fact *losing* value as each "now" is followed by another "now".

It is said time is a dimension. And indeed, it may well be a dimension, but not the same way objects have physical dimensions. An object could theoretically exist without there being time. The three physical dimensions (NOTE: the whole modern-physics multiple-dimensions thing is an entirely separate matter and isn’t relevant to this discussion, as we don’t involve ourselves in more than three dimensions of space and one of time in terms of assigning value to things) would still exist even if no events were passing nor could pass. However time is in fact dependent on the three physical dimensions. Things could be measurable without time (though you couldn't actually do it, since that would itself be an event requiring time to pass), but time can't be measured without there being things to constitute the cause and effect that make up events.

So by treating time as an actual dimension akin to length, depth, and width, we have pulled a fast one on ourselves. Time is not any of those things. It has no place in the universe as part of the aggregate measurement of stuff available to get, use, etc. It is only part of the context in which that stuff exists. But by treating it as if it is THE key to value, we live in a total delusion. That is what a fiat system creates and in fact relies on.

Now before you go storming the barricades to get back at the evil Illuminati who are behind all this, bear in mind you must also condemn yourself if you will condemn them. That is because without fiat money, the modern world as we understand it, along with all the various cool forms our stuff has taken on, would not exist. That is because there isn't enough precious metal in the world to act as a medium of exchange for all the people that want to use it to trade stuff with one another. When the US Constit'n was written to define gold and silver as the money of the US, the industrial revolution hadn't happened. The economy was all about food, really, and most of that was bartered (back in the good old days...). Gold and silver was the concern of a few individuals who knew one could not easily trade 10,000 bushels of wheat for whatever else he wanted, such as, for example, 1,000 muskets or 1,000 uniforms, because the good in question was perishable and not easily ported from place to place. Most people went blissfully through life never laying eyes on a gold or silver coin, and that was just fine by them. They didn't need them.

But along came new inventions- new forms stuff can take on-- and these things were not edible. However they still promised to be able to make more stuff into edible stuff, and so were valuable. Then of course these new inventions gave birth to other stuff that promised to make life easier or better. Stuff changed form, portable sources of energy became available, and now people were no longer tied to farming all day to get enough to eat. So they started living more in cities where they could get cooler stuff and become more like what they are today. But trading corn and wheat for the cool stuff was impractical. This movement was stymied 200 years ago by the lack of readily available gold and silver. So fiat money, which was not a new invention (but one that was rightly distrusted) became the answer, such as it was. After gold and silver began to be removed as the underpinnings for bank notes, which is something that happened in the US slowly over time (there's time again!), finally totally ending in the 1970s, interest on currency became the only way to buttress its value, lacking any other kind of promise or substance behind it (I won't get into the "petrodollar" issue-- that was simply a way to make sure there'd be a solid market for US$ overseas-- the dollar's value was and still is fundamentally based on inflation due to interest). As the underpinnings of gold and silver dropped away from the bank notes, of course, the interest rates went up. So now we have nothing but fiat value for our currency and not surprisingly, the interest rates on our money are higher generally then ever before seen. A rate of 1% used to be thought of as exorbitant back when money acted as depository notes for gold and silver. Now, try getting 1% on something other than a teaser rate from a credit card bank-- which will become 16.99% some time later (more time again…).

In fact for a long part of the western world's history, usury was defined as just plain charging interest on loans. Then it became charging more than 1%, then 5%, etc., until now, most states define usury as charging more than 25% per year on loans. And a lot of these states have fallen from enforcing these laws so now the less numerically-literate among us find themselves paying as much as 50% in interest on loans of whatever kind.

How long did it take us to get into this mess? About 150 years.

Now what about deflation? Deflation occurs at gunpoint. What this means is that the government will create a state of greater scarcity of currency for whatever reason by just plain sucking it up as it passes though it by taxation and other means (up to and including just plain seizing accounts or piles of money-- something they have in fact done the past, before "computerized money" was invented—so now they need only seize accounts). Anyone who may have wanted that money now doesn't have a chance to get it. In the case of money taken out of circulation via taxation, what this means is that The Man is making what you did or traded to get that money no longer valuable as a tradable good. Its value in the economy is effectively destroyed. But to make the pill go down a bit easier, it means the money you have left in your pocket/account is now worth more than before, all other things being equal. The bad news is that when a gov't resorts to deflation, all other things usually don't remain equal. In either case, inflation or deflation, you are getting the shaft. And it's all because we rely on a totally illusory phenomenon to ascribe value to our medium of exchange.

How does math come into this? As you can see, I have spared you and myself any of that. But if you're up for it, it comes in this way: There is no such thing as the current value of any money, in the same way there is no static "now". The value is always changing; 99%+ of the time it is losing its value due to inflation. If you want to know what money is really "worth" you shouldn't look at its value in terms of its denomination (dollars, euros, etc.) You have to look at it in terms of its relative rate of change of value. This is why I said earlier that calculus would be the math to use if one was going to express it as a formula.

If you are watching the value of your money these days, and you should be, what should concern you most is how high or low its rate of change in value happens to be relative to itself and other currencies/goods and services. But the point here, after all this, is to say that even in the best of times, it is the rate of change of the value of currency that is important to watch, not so much the actual stated value itself at any given moment in time, because for any given moment in time, that moment has already gone whenever you go to examine it. There is only the value now of something, and the value it is changing into. Since "now" isn't capturable, it leaves only the rate of change the relative value of the money is experiencing to express its value.

------------------------------------------------

OK, now for the disclaimer: I did in fact think of this "all by myself". I haven't plagiarized anyone's work. It is possible however that somewhere some economist or math geek has written in essence the same kind of thing. Rest assured, I didn't rip it from some web site or scan it in from a book published before the Dawn of Civilization (i.e., before the Internet's invention). But if there is some writing out there that is similar to mine, then all I can say is, I am glad I am not alone in being a tinfoil hat-wearing kook.

Thanks for reading! And, I welcome comments to the substance of the writing.

2008-03-14T12:51:00.004-04:00

I'll take Kristen-gate over this any day!

There's dumb, then there's Federal Reserve/GW dumb. The difference is this: the first kind if pitiable. The second is truly terrifying.

I wonder just when a loaf of bread will cost $1 million, just like in ze good old days back in '23? It'd be funny if it didn't mean such things as widespread sector-based unemployment, reduced wages, savings funds not being able to cover the suddenly-rising cost of college, and yet further impetus for sending the US into yet more military "adventures".

Another story mentions the USD has hit "parity" with the Swiss franc for the FIRST TIME IN HISTORY... at this rate the Japanese yen and the US dollar will "reach parity" some time in 2009!

The downward ride has yet to truly begin. "The other shoe" is waiting to drop-- this summer, more subprime loans will re-set than did last year. And we are already about as low on our prime rate as we can get without devaluing the currency to the point is becomes "free" to borrow-- though if "Uncle Ben" keeps at it, inflation will do it all for him. Japan was in that condition in the 1990s and the only thing that kept them from collapsing economically was, you guessed it, the US dollar, which was doing well at the time and for which we traded Japanese yen so their money would start to be worth something again. Question is, who's gonna do that for the US? Europe? China? Not bloody likely. Repeat after me: "I will go buy euros and other foreign currencies. I will buy metals and metals stocks. I will buy energy stocks." Now do it, please, while there is still time!

Did you really think I would not post on this topic again? :)

Sat 3/15 update: Ides of March indeed! It's like a really bad dream but waking up from it is not going to happen any time soon. Ugh. More rate cuts expected...

2008-03-03T13:59:00.001-05:00

OK so this is my real, actual, final warning. Really... I mean it this time!

There is still time to act... if you haven't yet, now is the time to do it...

The Federal Reserve's rescue has failed

2008-02-28T14:31:00.003-05:00

Men: Ever thought of yourself as a sissy? [Please resist the urge to post something snarky like “No, but you on the other hand…”]

Most men at some point admit to themselves that inside them, there is a craven little sissy who just wants his milk and mommy. Modern shrinks say simply this is the “Inner Child” at work, and indeed, it probably is, and you know, there’s nothing wrong with that. Even lions, the Kings of the Jungle, like to hide away during the day and sort of lay low and avoid conflict until nightfall when the hunter in them comes to the surface and then, it’s all business, blood and guts. But until then, the lion is sort of like a neutered house-cat. So even he has an “Inner Kitten”.

But what about good old-fashioned, against-the-wall-and-shoot-him-for-cowardice, crimes-against-testosterone, not-worth-his-salt, forsaking-the-office-of-traditional-manly-roles, cravenly, cowardly tendencies, the kind that makes you want to call Uncle Fred and have him pull some strings in the War Department to make sure you get a nice comfy desk job back at HQ rather than get sent to the front lines where all the REAL MEN are?

Well, this may well explain it. From the article:

And, whether or not this is the cause, male sperm counts have been dropping precipitously both here and across the world.

Studies in more than 20 countries have shown that average amounts have fallen by well over half in the past 50 years, from an average of more than 150 million per millilitre to 66 million.

The result is that men are now less than half as fertile as hamsters.

The counts are continuing to plunge by two per cent a year, and no end to the decline is in sight. At this rate, the average man will be unable to father children within decades.
...
Recent tests by WWF (formerly the World Wildlife Fund) on 14 basic foodstuffs taken from supermarket shelves found that every single one contained PCBs, and most were contaminated by phthalates.

Both substances have been shown to have deeply worrying effects on babies and children.

Scientists at Rotterdam's Erasmus University have found that boys born to mothers exposed to PCBs grew up wanting to play with dolls and tea-sets.

And research at the University of Rochester in New York State has shown that the male children of women exposed to phthalates have smaller penises and other signs of feminisation of their genitals.

Communities exposed to high levels of these and other gender-bender chemicals, from the Great Lakes of North America to the Russian Arctic, have been found to give birth to twice as many girls as boys.

Normally 106 boys are born for every 100 girls, in what is thought to be nature's way of compensating for the fact that males were more likely to be killed hunting or in conflict.

But increasingly this ratio is slipping - it is calculated that 250,000 babies who would have been boys have been born girls in the U.S. and Japan alone.

So men, if you have at some point tried to father kids and had a problem, or if you keep churning out girls (I have a friend from college who has had three kids, all girls; another has 4 girls and one boy; I know no one with that same ratio for boys:girls), this is probably why.

And even better, now you have somethig to explain away that little tea-set you keep under the bed next to your trusty squirrely rifle. :)

Not unrelatedly, take a look here, from the "Those guys are nuckin' futs" dept.:

I wonder what "Dude, you first!" is in their language?

And I always thought the gang initiation of "beating in" was rough... ugh, this makes it look like work for a merit badge during summer camp. I'll bet these guys have no issues with PCBs. Masculinity self-image? Yes. PCBs? No.

Finally, got this from my friend John, which is how I found that video above. You'll never look at chimps and cute little doggies quite the same way.

2008-02-18T11:43:00.002-05:00

Home again, home again... cannot tell you how glad I am to be back. Nothing like going away for work or even on a vacation to make you appreciate your "real" life.

A friend from grad school sent me this link. It's yet another "send me your secrets on a postcard" website. Hands down my favorite one is this:

>)

2008-02-11T16:23:00.000-05:00

Saw this show, In Treatment, last night for the first time. Wow, amazing. I have gushed here about the new BSG and this is in the same realm of quality, just a different genre. I mean, Oscar-winning acting every episode (saw 5 in a row last night) without fail. I am amazed. And while it's true that I don't get cable back home, it looks like I don't actually need to-- HBO is giving it away. God I love this new media stuff! It makes everything damn near free!

2008-02-09T01:06:00.000-05:00

How am I spending my first (and only) Friday night in SLC? This should give you an idea. =)