Unintended(?) Consequences

As I write this, the Federal Reserve is in the process of purchasing $600 billion worth of US Treasury bonds. Their stated objective is to force the value of the dollar lower in order to make American goods and services more valuable on the world market. It is obvious that this is the stimulus that Barack Obama could not hope to get through Congress, even before the recent election.

There are a few points that need to be made here:
1. We should note the willingness of the Reserve to do the bidding of Obama. The concept of the Reserve being a non-political guardian of the economy should be considered naive.
2. This option, on it's face, strains credulity. The US Government wants to borrow $600 billion. The Federal Reserve prints $600 billion in worthless paper currency to purchase these bonds. In essence, the Reserve is borrowing $600 billion dollars from the money currently in the market (ie: your wallet) in order to loan this money to the State. The State, in turn, will spend the $600 billion, then will extract $600 billion plus interest from those very same wallets to pay back the Reserve for the loan.
3. It is very possible that this move by the Fed is an attempt to hide the unwillingness of the Chinese to continue to finance the US Government's spending spree. If the State places a large bond on the open market, and no one is willing to buy, financial crisis would soon follow. If this is the underlying reason for this move by the Fed, then we are much closer to disaster than most are willing to accept.
4. The stated intention, to reduce the value of American currency, will have the effect of making American goods and services less expensive around the world. What they do not mention is that this is achieved by making goods and services more expensive here at home.

And these guys are sitting around as I write this, sincerely wondering how they could have lost the election.......

Going gentle into that good night....

I have had, in my life, some fine guitars. I possess one now, a sweet Gibson J45 dreadnought that I bought new in 1974. It is just beginning to have that wonderful Gibson sound that fine instruments begin to have once they have existed a while. It will continue to improve. with reasonable care, and be a masterpiece of instrumentation in another 25 years or so.

I, on the other hand, will not. I have played musical instruments of one kind or another for 46 years. I am not an accomplished master guitarist, but I have achieved competence, and have not been ashamed to play for myself and others over the years. Over time, I have noticed my singing voice become less and less rich, replaced by a rather reedy tone. I have consoled myself with the fact that I can still sing a note with a reasonable expectation that I will not be too high or low. I have gone from being a singer to being a "song stylist", as the great Johnny Cash once described himself.

However, one can lie to oneself for only so much time. Some friends came over to my home today for a visit. Their daughter is learning guitarist, so I dragged out the Gibson from my closet to give her a chance to play an instrument with real quality. As musicians are wont to do, as she finished playing, I picked it up. It has been a couple of years since I touched it, so I knew that I would be rusty, but I was not prepared for the cold fact that I simply could no longer play.

I immediately remembered the day my father picked up one of my guitars (I was 16, he would have been 41) and came to his own realization that his once formidable skills were no longer there. I was young and stupid, of course, and it is only now that I realize what the look on his face meant, as I feel the same loss myself. It is not a good thing to endure this downhill process with it's obvious end result.

My guitar now resides in my daughter's closet. She has expressed an interest in playing and knows a song or two. Her musical talents are many and far exceed my own, so the old Gibson will be in good hands. I lay this thing down with the best grace that I can, and try not to grow angry at the wasted time in my life when I could have, and should have, become the master of at least something.......

Comparative Mental Stability

One wants the bomb. The other wants the ring. Having a conversation with one is probably

about as sensible as talking with the other. One was obsessed with a skinny immature childlike creature named Frodo assigned with a task well beyond his abilities to complete sucessfully. The other is obsessed with a skinny immature childlike creature named Barack assigned with a task well beyond his abilities to complete successfully. Frodo attempts vainly to befriend the hapless creature, not understanding the extent of the insanity with which this creature is cursed. Barack attempts vainly to.........

You Will Not Be Remembered

My paternal grandfather, who shared his first, middle and last name with me, seems to be buried in two places. The headstone that sits in the oldest cemetery of his hometown, dating back well before the War Between the States, bears the name of he and my grandmother. Her body rests there, as it has since 1960, but he is missing. He actually lies with his second wife in a much more modern place of rest, in one of those bland "Restful Acres", the kind of place where there are no headstones because it makes the maintenance inconvenient. Here, the lawnmowers just run right over everyone, including he and my father.

Even though the chance of finding the grave site of my grandfather is twice as likely as the average soul, he won't be found. No one is looking. He was blessed with 3 fine sons, all of whom lived successful and full lives. But they are all dead now as well. And while my grandfather lived his entire life in Georgia, his sons ended up all over the country, and their children all over the world.

I know where my grandfather is buried. My children do not. I am sure that the same holds true for my cousins. My children never knew my grandfather; they hardly knew my father, for he passed on rather early and I had children rather late, a bad combination for this type of relationship.

As I grow older, I understand more and more the fleeting nature of this life. I am also coming to realize that the memory of someone is too an ephemeral thing. This even holds true for the famous, who are remembered, but not really remembered. The famous suffer the ignominious fate of every life's action being rehashed and pored over with opinions given as to the larger meaning, but the person within is as forgotten as any other poor slob.

I once owned a piece of acreage in Georgia that had apparently housed a small country church at one time. The church was long gone, but in the front corner of my property there were about 20 or so graves. Most had markers of some type, long ago rendered unreadable. The deed to my property showed the cemetery, but nothing was really known about it. What I found interesting, and why I mention it here, is that my property was in the middle of the woods. A road had been cut in order to sell the lots, but the property was so overgrown that it was obvious that no one had been aware of these souls and their resting place for well over a century. They must have had families, friends, acquaintances, but they too were long gone and long forgotten.

I write of this, not to be depressing, for I am a Christian, and know that while my body will eventually fail (sooner rather than later) my person will live on. No, I write of this to remind myself that what happens here and now is only of fleeting importance and will soon be swept up and away in the breeze that is time. And even the breeze that sweeps up what is and was my life will soon be forgotten as well.

Stimulus? How?

I know that the several stimuli that have been put forth since the collapse of the markets are old news. The proposed stimulus that is winding it's way through Congress as I write this will, in all likelihood, pass, and the money will be inserted into the vast economy, never to be seen again. Stimuli are not political, at least not in usual sense. They are usually vomited forth by whomever is currently in (and wants to stay in) power. The so-called TARP stimulus was put forth by the Bush administration, making it the first of many during this economic down cycle. I simply want to put in my two cents as to the nature of government stimuli and it's harm to the economy as a whole, and to those who lack political power in particular.

The general concept is that the injection of large amounts of funding into the general market by the federal government will serve to buoy the market and the economy as a whole, giving a needed boost to the economy and stopping a free-fall in the general market. I know that this explanation is simplified in the extreme, but will do for our purposes.

I have a few issues with the concept. These are simple, general principles, but I think that they are valid.

1. In order to place $1 into the economy, the government must first procure $1 in funds. Since the government operates as a zero-sum entity, in theory at least, they do not have $1 that is not already committed to other purposes. They can remove $1 from another purpose in order to place it into the economy, but they do not, as a rule, do this. They can borrow $1, but anyone who borrows money knows that in order to borrow $1, one has to service (pay interest on) this debt, and eventually one must pay it back. They can simply print $1, but when they do this, they reduce the value of all the other dollars in existence by a percentage equal to $1. This is called inflation. Finally, they can confiscate $1 from certain citizens in order to make $1 available to other citizens. This is called taxation. Simply put, the government cannot stimulate the economy by interjecting $1 without first removing $1 from the economy. Coupled with the cost of actually doing this makes the concept of government stimulus a joke, if one were to describe it kindly.

2. A government stimulus is executed by humans. Humans decide from whom they will confiscate funds and to whom they will give the aforementioned confiscated capital. Certain groups and individuals will suffer as the result of government stimulus, and certain groups and individuals will be given an advantage. With TARP, Lehman Brothers was allowed to fail, while Goldman Sachs was helped to survive. Both companies were similar in nature and size. Goldman Sachs has had close relations with both the current and past administrations, and it is possible that these relationships made all the difference. To disclaim personal relationships as a factor is to be overwhelmingly naive. Realistically, companies that curry favor with the party in power will probably be viewed favorably when it comes time to doling out stimulus funds, and companies that stand in opposition to said party will probably see little in stimulus funding. Human nature dictates that most people with power over the purse will use this power to help friends and punish enemies. A cursory look at government funding in general proves the truth of this theory.

3. Interference with failure is as distasteful to the free market as is interference with success. Companies fail, usually because they did not do business in a proper way, or because what they do simply becomes obsolete. This is a natural function of the free market. Should we have stopped the natural death of the adding machine by barring Texas Instruments from manufacturing the calculator? Financial markets tend to weed out weak segments of industry and reward good planning and quality financial stewardship. This natural evolution is magnified by downturns, but businesses fail in the best of times. Government stimulus serves to build a false economy, sort of in the way that unions tend to protect under qualified and difficult workers.

I trained for years to become a journeyman in an industry that was decimated by the introduction of a computer that would do the same thing I had done by hand. I had to find something else to do in order to provide, food, clothing and shelter for my family. I found something else to do and went on. Such is life in a free economy. Maybe GM should do the same thing.

How Obamacare Compares to JFK Airport

Unless you are a regular air traveler, you probably will not appreciate the utter frustration at what has happened to me in the last few hours. No one died or was seriously hurt, no property (make that none of my property) was damaged or destroyed, and no one ended up in jail. However, I was reminded throughout the night how this was probably the way Obamacare will operate, slowly and frustratingly driving us all mad.

I was boarding a JetBlue flight, the proverbial redeye, in Salt Lake City. I would be changing planes at JFK and would finally end up in Boston. I had checked my larger bags and of course kept my laptop bag as a carryon. For anyone familiar with Salt Lake, it is awash with Mormons, and so my flight was filled with young, cheerful and polite young people who seemed to be making an attempt to load all their worldly possessions into the overhead bins. It quickly became obvious that only a small portion of what had been dragged aboard the plane was actually going to fit inside.

All airlines/airports have a procedure to mitigate this issue called gate-check. The flight attendant gives the passenger a claim ticket for his item and it is loaded into the luggage area with the checked baggage. This system has two distinct advantages: 1. The baggage in question is usually treated with more care than checked baggage, making it an appropriate storage method for delicate electronics and musical instruments. 2. When the plane lands, airport personnel simply deliver this items to the ramp just outside the aircraft door where they can be easily claimed.

However, at JFK, the airport has adopted the Obamacare method of service for gate-checked baggage. I and my gate-check compatriots waited for some time on the ramp until all passengers had disembarked and the cleaning crew was inside. Finally, a cheerful flight attendant informed us that at JFK uniquely, gate-checked baggage goes straight to baggage claim. It would have been nice to know this information before handing over my laptop, since the JetBlue personnel were certainly familiar with the procedure.

We hurried down to baggage claim, just in time to see the two very expensive videocams that had been gate-checked by two videographers as they came tumbling down the chute, probably never to work again. My laptop seemed none the worse, but I of course had to re-enter the long line of travelers to go back through the TSA security checkpoint. I was "lucky' to have a three hour layover, because I have used most of that time getting back to my gate.

I can't wait for Obamacare.

Perpetually 14

The paraphrase "If you are not a liberal when you are 20, you have no heart. If you are not a conservative when you are 40, you have no brain" has been attributed to Winston Churchill, Francois Guisot, Georges Clemenceau, and probably others. Regardless of who first uttered such a aphorism, its truth is not dimmed by it's cloudy origin.

When I have honest conversation with a left thinker, although that in and of itself is a contradition in terms, I find that I am left with the impression that I am conversing with someone around the intellectual age of 14. A child, especially in that magic time of life between true self-awareness and adulthood, has a view of the world in which all paths seem to be possible. War can be ended, the poor can be fed, the have and the have-nots can be equalized, and perfection can be obtained.

With maturity comes the realization that one can improve the world, but one cannot perfect the world. Wishes of childhood are replaced by plans of adulthood. Imagination is tempered by reality. Hopefully, one retains enough of the child within to avoid being deserving of the title of curmudgeon, but not so much that one spends one's entire paycheck on candy.

But the liberal; he retains the paycheck/candy mentality. His improvement in mental acuity is evidenced by the fact that he now buys the candy with MY money.

When the Progressive Mind Empties

I find as time goes by that I can tell, almost to the moment when a liberal with who is actively discussing an issue runs out of intellectual fuel. The moment can be identified by a statement, put forth by the aformentioned liberal, that fails to forward a salient point or a reasoned rejoinder to an argument put forth by a conservative thinker. Instead, the progressive begins to use descriptive adjectives pointing to some physical imperfection on the part of a well-known conservative that promotes a similar point of view to the position being elucidated. Instead of "I disagree with you position based on the following.....", suddenly the liberal begins to say "You sound just like that fat Rush Limbaugh" or "That is just what George Bush would say (not that President Bush could be called a conservative by any stretch of the imagination), and we all know how stupid he is!".

When the liberal begins to describe his political opponents' physical faults, you know you have won the rational argument. The liberal, of course, will be blissfully unaware of his intellectual vapidity and will think that calling someone "fat" or "ugly" will suffice for a position.

It won't.

I'm curious. What is the difference between the cowardly traitor who abandons the front lines first and the cowardly traitor who abandons the front lines last?

Thanks Bart. From all those babies who will not have to deal with the trouble of having a chance to live.

April 9 Update: The air is a little cleaner in DC today because we won't be seeing this face anymore. A couple of hundred more and we will be all set.

American Exceptionalism

We are a nation of immigrants. Legal, illegal, temporary, undocumented, by whatever category we chose to pigeonhole ourselves or others, we all came from somewhere. Even the "native" Americans came from somewhere else, and did not appear by Ecclesiastical fiat, even though it would seem so, if you were to depend on statements in recently published history textbooks. .


When America began to populate in the 17th century (those are the 1600's for those in public school), the people that came here from anywhere shared one great exceptionalism; they were willing to uproot themselves and their families from everything they had known and move to a place of which they knew little. The one thing they did know is that the place to which they were going promised nothing except the freedom to fail or succeed based on terms dictated only by God and the pilgrim himself. This alone was enough to impel the immigrant to risk it all in order to gain the opportunity to escape the oppression of national leaders who viewed the people as subjects and not as citizens.

These people, soon after arriving in this land, began to shed their identities as immigrants and started thinking of themselves as Americans. They fought hard against the forces of nature and the vestiges of control still sought by the nations from which they had come until they formed their own independent nation in 1776. As the dust of independence settled exceptional people from all over the world continued to come and build the greatest and most powerful nation the world has ever known. All this was achieved while the people fought off the natural tendency of bureaucracies to grow like an untreated cancer.

The special something that made Americans American was that tendency to look inside for what it takes to succeed. It would be hard to imagine a farmer in 1840 asking the government to pay him not to plant a crop. Likewise, any government agent who set foot on a farmers property to demand that he grow less (or more) of something would be met with disdain, if not a shotgun. We decided what we would do and how we would do it, and we would reap the benifits or pay the costs that resulted from our efforts.

Somewhere along the line, beginning in the early 20th century (public schoolers, count up from the aformentioned 17th) and acceleratiing like an avalanche, burying everything in its path, what made Americans exceptional begain to ebb and die. I would like to blame Woodrow Wilson and his romance with industrial Fascism, or Franklin Roosevelt and his economic Socialism, or especially Barack Obama and his Congressional accomplices for their utopian vision of combined Socialism/Fascism, but I can't. The hard and cold fact is that we are no longer exceptional as a people. We have accepted the leadership of unrealistic utopian dreamers and bureaucrats as though they had any idea what they were talking about. We accept it because we no longer bother to learn what is true. We don't even accept the concept of truth anymore.

The hard, cold fact is that America is declining. Our children will suffer the consequences that will come as the result of the decisions of what we can only euphamistically refers as 'leaders', and the ultimate responsibilty will fall to we the people who put them in office and have kept them in office. We were given a mighty and wonderful gift by generations of people who fought and died to create and preserve it, and we squandered it. I look around at the young adults of today, blissfully ignorant of the past, patiently waiting like lobsters in the pot waiting for the end to come.