Magellan Roadmate 1212 Product Review

Last Friday, before we left for Vegas, I stopped by our local Costco to look for a GPS receiver. We were going to be heading for various soccer fields around town and I needed a good way to find them. The only product Costco carried was the Magellan Roadmate 1212. I paid about $120 for it.

I love it.

The 1212's voice is a pleasant female one, so we named her Gina Patrina. Along with our last name, that makes her initials GPS.

:-)

Gina Patrina is easy to use and quickly finds routes and recalculates them when you make a mistake. I haven't yet figured out how to save addresses into memory, but I'm sure we'll find that in time. The best part about Gina Patrina is that she knows where things are. We needed to find an Outback Steakhouse. All we had to do was go to Points of Interest on the menu and type in "Outback." She then gave us a list of Outbacks closest to our present location. Tapping on the first one gave us the course to get there. We used that feature several times to great effect.

Gina Patrina found her satellites quickly. At the hotel, we parked in a covered spot, but as soon as we drove out into the open, she figured out where she was. Her transition from San Diego to Las Vegas was pretty quick, too.

I'd recommend the Magellan Roadmate 1212.

Cheezburger of the Day

I'm still unpacking from the trip to Vegas and doing other odds and ends. Serious blogging will resume later. Until then ...

more animals

Llamas!

Blogging Will be Light

... for the rest of the weekend. We tied our first game of the Vegas tournament, 0-0. We've got another game today and one tomorrow. The girls are all going to Circus Circus tonight. I won't have time to blog.

Cheezburger of the Day

more animals

Good Morning from Vegas!

I'll be posting some photos of the cool stuff we see later in the day. We're staying at the Mirage and they seem to have a jungle theme. As much as I loathe Las Vegas, I'm not above enjoying the visual treats the drunken, dimwitted gamblers have paid for.

Totally off topic: For those of you bugged by people who end sentences with prepositions, here's Grammar Girl weighing in on the subject.

Another Dose of Dino

The guy was genuinely funny. This clip is about 4:30, but it's worth listening to what he does to his signature song, Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime. The jokes in his preface about drinking were not really serious. The more I've read his biographical sketches, the more I see that drinking was a running gag that did not reflect his life.

Enjoy.

Heading for Vegas

After work today, my daughter and I are going to fly off to Vegas for a soccer tournament. Whoohoo!

I hate Vegas.

Booo!

I'll be bringing my camera and schleptop so I can blog from there. In the meantime, here's a video highlight reel of my daughter playing absolute shut down defense. Or maybe it's someone a lot like her playing a different sport. I get them confused.

Cheezburger of the Day

more animals

A Voluntary Epidemic

... is the diagnosis by our Precentor of Measurements. I love it.

Link of the Day

Is this darkly humorous post over at Money Week. Well, I thought it was funny.

Free Money for Us, Bills for the Kindergarteners

One of my favorite econobloggers, Greg Mankiw, linked to this piece in the WSJ. Here's the key tidbit for me.

Back in the 1980s, many commentators ridiculed as voodoo economics the extreme supply-side view that across-the-board cuts in income-tax rates might raise overall tax revenues. Now we have the extreme demand-side view that the so-called "multiplier" effect of government spending on economic output is greater than one -- Team Obama is reportedly using a number around 1.5.

To think about what this means, first assume that the multiplier was 1.0. In this case, an increase by one unit in government purchases and, thereby, in the aggregate demand for goods would lead to an increase by one unit in real gross domestic product (GDP). Thus, the added public goods are essentially free to society. If the government buys another airplane or bridge, the economy's total output expands by enough to create the airplane or bridge without requiring a cut in anyone's consumption or investment.

For Obama and the Keynesian Democrats, all of this stimulus money is free. That's not quite true when you look out into the future, though.

If I take out a loan for $100,000 with a 30-year payoff and a fixed rate of 5%, I will get $100,000 on day one and will have to pay $6,441.84 in payments the first year. In the first year, I will see an increase in income of $93,558.16. Yay! I will have stimulated myself! Hurrah!

In year two, I will have $0 extra income and will have to pay $6,441.84 in payments. Owie! Dittos for years 3-30. That's what the stimulus is all about. A big jazz right now and bills on off into the future for as far as the eye can see. After all, we don't ever pay down the principal. Since we Boomers are starting to retire and won't be paying much in taxes, who will make those payments?

We did it for you, kids. It was all about the children.

Hard Work and Thrift Will Lead You Astray

... or at least lead you to pay the other fellow's bills. Dig this bit from Europe.

Sober people are now contemplating whether a euro area member such as Greece might default on its debt. In addition to directly damaging bank balance sheets, this would destroy confidence in its banking and financial system ... To start with, that Greece will be allowed to default is questionable. There is an alternative, namely fiscal retrenchment, wage reductions, and assistance from the EU and the IMF for the cash-strapped government ... But, ultimately, everyone will swallow hard and proceed, much as the US Congress, having played rejectionist once, swallowed hard and passed the $700 billion bank bailout bill when disaster loomed.

And who will be the bill-payer? Well, there's only one candidate in the EU who can do it. The thrifty Germans.

Now that recession and deflation loom across the euro area, this is a response on which all members should be able to agree. It can be complemented by fiscal stimulus. If countries in a relatively strong budgetary position, like Germany, are in the best position to apply it, all the better; the result will be help from outside for their more heavily indebted, cash-strapped neighbours who need it most.

From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs. Or something like that.

Link of the Day

... comes from Paul Kedrosky. Hilarious!

Adventures with Adobe CS4 - Illustrator

I recently received my upgrade to Adobe Creative Suite 4. After an enormous headache trying to install it, which I might blog about later, I've got it running now and have had a chance to play with some of the tools. Thanks to Adobe TV, I've got access to lots of great tutorial videos. My goal is to replace Microsoft Office with Adobe Creative Suite. Since my work is almost exclusively being done for the web, I'm trying to find something better than MS Office to produce images and charts.

First off, Illustrator. I'm more of an engineer than an artist. I think in terms of flow charts and diagrams. I have yet to find a single Adobe product that can produce a flow chart. With PowerPoint, I can draw boxes, fill them with text and then connect them with arrows or lines. If I move the boxes, the connectors move with them. Illustrator has connectors, but once they have connected the boxes, you can't move the boxes unless you want to leave the connectors behind. That's not a real connector, is it? Argh.

Illustrator is designed much more for the artist than the engineer. Simple flow charts are going to be a pain. It looks like I will have to create the diagrams in PowerPoint and then import them into Illustrator. Ouch.

As I continue to learn Illustrator, I might post some of my results.

USS Abraham Lincoln Sunset

This was the scene as we pulled into the dock. The trip had lots of active whales, playful dolphins and an awesome sunset. What more could you ask for? Thanks, God.

Click on the image for a larger version.

Point Loma Lighthouse Sunset

I think this one is worth clicking on the image.

The Shape of Things to Come in Britain

Here's what we have to look forward to under a stimuloid-crazed Obama presidency and Pelosi congress.

The Government's bail-out of the banks in October with £37 billion of taxpayers' money was supposed to have "saved the world", according to the PM, but now it is clear that it has not even saved the banks. Our money kept the show on the road for only three months.

As the Liberal Democrats' Treasury spokesman Vince Cable asks: where has the £37 billion gone? The answer, as Cable knows, is that it has disappeared down the plug hole.

It is finally dawning on the Government that the liabilities of the British banks grew to be so vast in the boom years that they now eclipse the entire economy. Unfortunately, the Treasury is pledged to honour those liabilities because it has guaranteed not to let a British bank go down. RBS has liabilities of £1.8 trillion, three times annual UK government spending, against assets of £1.9 trillion. But after the events of the past year, I wager most taxpayers will believe the true picture is worse.

Borrow, spend, borrow, spend, lather, rinse, repeat.

The best time to get control of your debts is this instant. Instead, we're about to follow in Britain's wake.

Humpback Whales

On our whale watching trip yesterday, we were allegedly out to see gray whales which are migrating this time of year from Alaska to Baja. Thankfully, we saw some other kinds of whales. It turns out gray whales don't do much of anything. They slide up to the surface, blow and then slide back down into the deep. Humpback whales, on the other hand (fin?), are lots more fun*.

We watched a pair of humpback whales play on the surface for quite a while. Sometimes they poked their noises out of the water to check things out, sometimes they rolled around and waved their fins in the air and whenever they dived, you got a great view of their massive tails.

I think this one was on a people-watching trip. The naturalist on the boat called this breaching, but there wasn't the kind of massive splash you normally associate with Shamu breaching.

I wanted to throw them some food after this one waved at us with its fin. It was like a Sea World performance. Only with a lot bigger tank for the whales.

Here, the whales were practicing their synchronized swimming. I certainly hope the pool at the next Olympics is big. Really big.

* - If you are throwing a party, always invite the humpback whales if you get a chance. They will mingle well with the other guests. Gray whales will just sit in a corner, nursing drinks and looking painfully awkward.

What He Said

On this Inauguration Day, our Archbishop of Texas puts our thoughts into words.

Wake Riding Dolphins

Yesterday, the kids and I went whale watching. This time, instead of seeing nothing but fog, we saw lots of cool stuff. I'll be posting photos from the trip throughout the day. Here, a bunch of dolphins are riding our wake. Our naturalist guide from Scripps Institute of Oceanography identified them, but I was too busy snapping photos and don't remember what she called them. Oh well.

Cheezburger of the Day

more animals

Today's Blog Safety Tip

In the interest of making sure all of our blog readers avoid injury, I will posting safety tips from time to time. Here's today's.

Do not read this blog while smoking in bed. Your sheets will smell terrible.

Stimulus Package Fail

Dig this article in Bloomberg. Riverside, California is a test lab for the Keynesian idiocies about to be unleashed on the whole US.

Riverside also has almost $1 billion worth of public-works projects underway or planned, from widening roads to building a new jail. The county illustrates both the promise and the limitations of the spending President-elect Barack Obama proposes to pull the U.S. economy out of a recession that may become the longest since the Great Depression.

“What infrastructure spending can do is bolster employment in a group of industries, like construction, with workers who are ready to go,” said Brad Kemp, director of regional research at Beacon Economics in Los Angeles. “What it can’t do is stop the unemployment rate from rising currently because there are a lot of forces coming at consumers, who are holding back on spending.”

One trillion dollars is about to be blown into confetti in exchange for ... nothing.

The Shape of Things to Come Across Europe

... as the US devours all the investment money in sight to pay for stimuloids.

Jan. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Spain had its AAA sovereign credit rating removed by Standard & Poor’s in the second downgrade of a euro-region government in five days, as the country’s first recession in 15 years swelled the budget deficit.

Why is the budget deficit rising? There's a mandatory portion as they try to stabilize their banks and there's an elective portion as they enact their own pointless stimulus packages.

The cost of economic stimulus packages and bank bailouts is boosting budget deficits around the euro-region, fueling concern governments will have difficulty paying their debt. S&P cut Greece’s rating one step to A- on Jan. 14. A day earlier, it threatened to downgrade Portugal’s debt. S&P also reduced the outlook on Ireland’s rating to negative from stable.

I wonder who will be the first to wake up to the idiocy of borrow and spend.

It's all About the Hand Outs

Dig this. The California budget deficit is $40B. Even if we fired every state employee, it would not cover the deficit.

Payroll for California’s roughly 230,000 civil servants tallies a mere $18 billion — not including legislative aides or people who work for the state’s courts or university systems. (Those 149,000 additional folks aren’t under the governor’s control, but even if Schwarzenegger could fire them, their salaries wouldn’t be enough to patch the $40 billion deficit.)

Unreal. It looks like the handouts will have to stop.

Your Sunday Dose of Dino

... is this funny rendition of You're Nobody 'til Somebody Loves You. Watching it makes you wish you could have seen Martin and Lewis before they hit Hollywood. Dean is a genuinely funny guy. I can only imagine what their improv was like when they were together on stage.

My Kitchen's a Mess - You Need to Help Me

Due to circumstances beyond my control, the place is a total disaster area over here. There was no way I could have foreseen the events that led to this catastrophe. Because of the downturn in cleanliness, I need all of you to pitch in and bail me out. Each of you need to send me $20 so I can hire a "cleaning czar" and a crew of "cleaning czarinas" to put all this stuff away.

For our part, we promise to enact a stringent austerity package. We will reduce our tangerine consumption by 33%!

Due to her skillful management efforts during this crisis, our Maximum Leader's bonus of 1400 cans of tuna will not be cut.

Starving Spain

While US Treasury sales are going well, Spanish debt is languishing.

Standard & Poor's has threatened to strip Spain of its coveted AAA rating as country's budget deficit explodes, offering the clearest warning to date that even wealthy states are running out of room to borrow.

If you think there isn't a lot of money out there to borrow right now, just wait until Mr. Hope and Change and his Congress get started. They're going to gorge themselves on money desperately needed by countries like Spain. Here's some more.

Michael Klawitter, from Dresdner Kleinwort, said Spain was now crumbling on every front. "Tax revenue is collapsing. There is a banking crisis and a massive deterioration linked to housing. It is arguable that Spain has already let matters go past the point of no return," he said.

The Spaniards haven't been particularly profligate. Their public debt is less than ours.

Europe's bond supply will reach €765bn this year, up 15pc from 2008. It is far from clear whether the markets can absorb so much debt. Although Spain's public debt is modest at under 40pc of GDP, this may not prevent a downgrade.

Why is Spain in crisis? Because money is rushing to find safety in US debt and Pelosi, Reid and Obama are flooding the world with that debt. Anyone who thinks that Barack Obama will be good for the US image across the world is fooling themselves. It won't be long before the European MSM picks up on this story and starts running front page tales of America starving them of funds.

Reid, Pelosi and Obama work hard to improve the American image all over the world.

Peter Schiff is Almost Right

Peter Schiff, an economic advisor to Ron Paul, has been a vocal and strident critic of our culture of borrowing and spending. He called the market collapse accurately and is now speaking out against Obama's massive stimulus plan. Here's a particularly good summary of his views.

While I agree with his opposition to spending sprees, I don't see how this is going to lead to a run on the dollar. Where are investors going to go? Certainly not the Euro as Greece, Italy, Spain and Ireland are all likely to default in the near future. Here's a little about the problems Greece faces.

"Eventually, the interest payments on debts will be higher than was thought, and you need to recoup those interest rate payments by higher taxes in the future," said Cailloux.

"There's not much we can do," said Papanicolaou when asked about his reaction to widening debt spreads, which are essentially a result of the bond market's perceived risk of Greece's ability to pay back its debt ...

Chris Pryce, Western Europe director at Fitch Ratings, says the current yield differential between Greek and German bonds reflect a better assessment of the risk. "Previously euro zone investors did not property distinguish the risks in the euro zone. Greek government accounts are pretty appalling. They have the highest debt after Italy." Greece's debt-to-GDP ratio is forecast by Fitch to have hit 92.0% in 2008; Italy's hovers around 100.0%.

Peter Schiff says that "America is going to lose its dominant position in the world." In order for us to lose that, it's got to go somewhere else. Where? Europe? Not likely with the Eurosocialists decades ahead of us on implementing stupid fiscal policies. Japan? Probably not. The Japanese "Lost Decade" left them with a debt load about three times the size of ours as they tried all of the things the Democrats and Obama are planning to try now.

South America has Brazil as a candidate, but they're hardly an industrial powerhouse. Argentina can't seem to stop nationalizing their assets to hand out goodies. Australia would be a possible candidate to replace us if it wasn't so tiny. The leader of the world can't be that small.

That leaves us with India and China as the ones to replace us. While I think that's possible in the future, right now they are both still very poor countries. I can't see the world turning to China or India yet. In ten years, maybe. But for now, the US is still the place to put your money in times of crisis. That fact is going to provide the illusion that Obama's policies of borrow and spend are working.

In the meantime, Greece, Italy, Spain and Ireland are in big, big trouble. If you want to see where profligacy and debt lead when you aren't the world's safe haven, watch what happens there.

Whew! Thank Goodness Obama is Fiscally Responsible!

"Surreal" is the only word to describe this.

President-elect Barack Obama will convene a "fiscal responsibility summit" in February designed to bring together a variety of voices on solving the long term problems with the economy and with a special focus on entitlements, he said during an interview with Washington Post reporters and editors this afternoon.

"We need to send a signal that we are serious," said Obama of the summit.

Of course, the fastest way to fiscal responsibility is to borrow and spend another trillion dollars.

Seriously.

Matthew Kelly

My fiancee turned me on to Matthew Kelly. I've picked up a lot from him; it's really changed the way I see life. I'm off to exercise now (inspired to set aside time for it by Matthew), but I'll be blogging more about what I've learned as the weeks go by.

Hanging Out

... is pretty much all I feel like doing now. Our Maximum Leader is of the same mind.

So Much for Roads and Bridges

Out of $825B+, roads and bridges get $30B. That's 4% of the total stimulus bill.

Modernize Roads, Bridges, Transit and Waterways: To build a 21st century economy, we must engage contractors across the nation to create jobs rebuilding our crumbling roads, and bridges, modernize public buildings, and put people to work cleaning our air, water and land.
•$30 billion for highway construction;
•$31 billion to modernize federal and other public infrastructure with investments that lead to long term energy cost savings;
•$19 billion for clean water, flood control, and environmental restoration investments;
•$10 billion for transit and rail to reduce traffic congestion and gas consumption.

Meanwhile, the bloated and failed education industry gets far, far more.

Education for the 21st Century: To enable more children to learn in 21st century classrooms, labs, and libraries to help our kids compete with any worker in the world, this package provides:
•$41 billion to local school districts through Title I ($13 billion), IDEA ($13 billion), a new School Modernization and Repair Program ($14 billion), and the Education Technology program ($1 billion).
•$79 billion in state fiscal relief to prevent cutbacks to key services, including $39 billion to local school districts and public colleges and universities distributed through existing state and federal formulas, $15 billion to states as bonus grants as a reward for meeting key performance measures, and $25 billion to states for other high priority needs such as public safety and other critical services, which may include education.
•$15.6 billion to increase the Pell grant by $500.
•$6 billion for higher education modernization.

Stimulus package? I don't think so. This is just the biggest pork pile in the history of the country. It also takes $79B, more than twice what they will spend on roads and bridges, and hands it to the California Teachers Association and other such education industry political goon squads across the country.

The College Board Causes Stress

... or at least it does for me and my son.

This is a serious post and I'd be interested in hearing your answer to a question I ask at the end.

My son is a Junior in high school. He'll be taking the SATs this year. Over at the College Board website, where you sign up for the test, they make you go through a whole series of questions about who you are, what you're interested in studying and so forth. The site forces you to make decisions about your career at age 16. They do this so they can market their test results to various schools who will then court the student based on their scores.

Meanwhile, the student and their parents are forced into having decision discussions about careers long before they're necessary. I took a chemistry class in high school, either as a Junior or a Senior, and that sparked my interest in chemistry which led to chemical engineering which led to math as my eventual bachelor's degree. I didn't settle on a major until I was a Junior in college! Meanwhile, as a part of a marketing effort for the College Board, my son has to go through all this angst four years earlier when he isn't even remotely ready.

It's madness.

When I was a Junior in high school, my interests were tropical fish and Dungeons and Dragons. My career goal was to own a pet store where I bred my own tropical fish in the back. For a while, I even bred and sold my own fish to local stores. I made single-digit dollars for my efforts. At 16, I wasn't able to do the financial analysis to determine that this was not going to work out. Had someone forced me to make a career decision right then and there, my father would have had to beat me over the head with reality instead of allowing me to grasp this in my own, natural time.

I finally discovered that you can go through the SAT registration process by clicking on "Uncertain" for every answer and so I did. The last thing we need right now is some corporation jamming premature decisions down our throat so they can sell their products to the education industry.


Question: In high school, I wanted to raise tropical fish for the rest of my life. What did you want to do?

Image used without permission from Rachel.

Hamas Reaches Out With An Olive Branch

... isn't that nice?

Isn't it amazing how assymetrical this war is? Hamas rocket attacks never make the front pages, but Israeli airstrikes always do. Israeli peace overtures to Hamas never get attention, but Hamas calls for peace do.

Jan. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Hamas would accept an immediate weeklong cease-fire if it is accompanied by an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, said Hamas official Mussa Abu Marzuk.

The group is also demanding that border crossings are opened and is willing to accept European or Turkish monitors at those sites, Abu Marzuk, deputy to the Islamic group’s political leader, Khalid Mashaal, said in an interview yesterday in Damascus.

“We want an immediate cease-fire and the withdrawal of Israeli troops that entered Gaza,” Abu Marzuk said in the most detailed comments on the talks by a senior Hamas official. He said the group would be willing to negotiate a yearlong cease- fire during the cessation.

Isn't that kind of them to offer peace talks like that? I wonder if things like this had anything to do with it.

If so, wouldn't it then make sense for Israel to just go over and whack them continually whether they were firing rockets or not? Every time the Israelis want to have a conversation with Hamas, their opening move should be to blow up huge chunks of Gaza. It's clear that such behavior gets Hamas to the bargaining table. it's equally clear that not blowing things up does not.

Cheezburger of the Day

more animals

We're Willing to Work for a Can of Tuna

Dig this. Our Maximum Leader won't charge as much as Lola and is far more regal. After all, she's the head of the Feline Theocracy.

We're All Bankers Now

Dig this. It's got an illustrative video clip from Good Fellas, so you know it has to be good.

The Money Fairy Will Soon Visit California

Yay!

WASHINGTON -- State and local governments would benefit from more than $160 billion in federal aid under a plan pushed by House Democratic leaders in negotiations over the economic-recovery package taking shape on Capitol Hill.

This is wonderful news. Now we can get back to spending wildly.

Hooray for Barack Obama! Hooray for Nancy Pelosi! California is saved!

Why Politics Doesn't Matter (Much)

In all the screaming and rushing about over the economic crisis, this pundit or that is pointing the finger at deregulation or the Community Reinvestment Act or the Republicans or the Democrats. Allow me to offer a way to put an end to all that.

Dig this post where Mish goes through a bunch of stories about state and local pension funds that are imploding. Here's a sample.

The Fort Worth Employees’ Retirement Fund — the pension fund for city employees — has taken an enormous hit from the stock-market collapse.

As of Nov. 30, the fund had fallen to approximately $1.29 billion, a drop of nearly 35 percent from its peak of nearly $1.99 billion in October 2007.

City taxpayers should be concerned about potential long-term implications. The pension fund has already required a sizable increase in support from taxpayers to shore it up. The more dollars that are pumped into it, the greater are the chances that the City Council will have to compensate by raising the property tax rate or reduce services.

There's a great site, PensionWatch, devoted to tracking the implosion of these funds.

This crisis is huge and will cause many states, counties and cities to declare bankruptcy. It is not subject to solution through a stimulus package. It cannot be stopped short of printing money like the Weimar Republic. It cuts across party lines.

We were not willing to earn what we received. Electing Obama or John McCain wasn't going to change that.

In the end, this behavior is self-correcting. We'll figure this out that hard way, whether we end up in some socialist train wreck a few years from now as the State tries to cover all the bills or if we embark on an austerity program starting today at 1PM.

You have to pay your bills. You cannot escape it. You have to pay your bills.

Booze may not be Enough, Bernanke Recommends Heroin, Cocaine

The best thing for a massive hangover is more intoxicants.

Jan. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke warned that a fiscal stimulus won’t be enough to spur an economic recovery and that the government may need to buy or guarantee banks’ tainted assets to revive growth.

We're all investment bankers now. After all, we're buying their businesses from them. Personally, I'm heading down to Nordstroms to get fitted for my pinstripe suit.

Because I'm a Rebel

... and The Man wants you to catblog on Friday. Well, here I am, rubbing it in the face of The Man, catblogging on a Tuesday. Ha! Take that, The Man.

Here, our Maximum Leader lays sprawled out like a fat slob on a chair sits elegantly on her throne.
If you really want to stick it to The Man, click on the image.

Something to Make you Stop and Think

... can be found in this opinion piece by Kevin Hassett over at Bloomberg. Here it is.

When President George W. Bush was first elected, total federal government spending was about $1.7 trillion. In other words, the difference between federal outlays and federal revenue this year will be bigger than the entire government was as recently as 2000.

Our 2009 deficit will be larger than the entire federal government budget was in 2000. Think about that for a minute before you go and read the whole thing.

Worth the Visit

Try this link.

A Soccer Defender is Like an NFL Cornerback

I came to this analogy as I watched my daughter play soccer yesterday. Her natural position is right defense aka right halfback. She's on the small side, but plays a very physical game and has average speed. At one point in the game, the opposing forward on her side was the same size, but was faster. Over and over again this girl would get behind her and then receive a pass and streak for the goal. Our coach had told my daughter to play between the forward and the ball and she was just doing what she was told.

That was a mistake as any NFL cornerback could tell you. Once a corner gets beat by a faster wide receiver who is going deep, they are in real trouble.

The concepts are very similar. You're trying to intercept passes or tackle your opponent. Once I made this connection, the game looked much more familiar. I've never played soccer outside of some PE classes decades ago and although I've coached it, my knowledge was less than some of the girls on my teams. This analogy made the game more enjoyable.

Despite repeatedly beating her, my daughter's forward never scored. On some breakaways, she was able to catch up as the girl slowed to dribble the ball and on others our goalie made the save. My conclusion was that, just like an NFL cornerback, when playing against a faster forward, you need to give them a substantial cushion. This makes even more sense in soccer than football as a soccer forward can't do anything meaningful with the ball until they can shoot on goal. So long as you're between them and the goal, you're in good shape.

Momma Daisy

... is at it again! You can't stop her, you can only hope to slow her down!

Today's Blog Safety Tip

In the interest of making sure all of our blog readers avoid injury, I will posting safety tips from time to time. Here's today's.

Do not read this blog while standing on the top rung of an extension ladder. Sudden amazement at the wisdom contained therein may cause you to lose your balance and fall to the ground.

Cheezburger of the Day

more animals

Obama Flips Gen-Y the Bird

From his throne in the mythical Office of the President Elect, surrounded by Greek columns and royal trumpeters, Barack Obama has released some of the details of his economic plan. Here's all you need to know. In exchange for about a trillion dollars of borrowed money, we will be buying this:


Even if you agree with his assumptions, and they seem preposterously naive to me, we will get a 1% drop in unemployment for 2 years. In exchange for that, we will saddle future generations with another trillion dollars of debt.

Good luck collecting on that debt from the Boomers. They're already heading out the door with sacks filled with stolen money, money stolen from Gen-X and Gen-Y.

This thing doesn't even look good on the advertising brochure. It's the ultimate gesture of our time - borrowing a mountain of cash and forcing our children to pay for a short-term benefit for us. Lucky for us, we've wrecked the public education system so Gen-Y is probably too ignorant to understand this well enough to get mad.

Have fun, kids!

A Contrary View - Government Borrowing Will Not Crowding out the Private Sector

Here's a tidbit from a well-reasoned 2009 predictions post over at the Accrued Interest blog.

What about Treasury supply you ask? Won't the massive debt load eventually push rates much higher? While acknowledging that supply is an obvious negative for prices always and everywhere, as it is, Treasury supply is clearly not overwhelming demand. The 3-year and 10-year auctions from last week went quite well.

Besides the theory that government debt crowds out private investment doesn't hold water right now. Private lending ain't happening in areas where the government isn't subsidizing. In essence, the Treasury is leveraging because the private sector can't.

Eventually, the Fed's programs will result in much higher inflation, and thus Treasury rates will rise substantially. But I think this is a year or more away, too far away to recommend a short.

While it seems contrary to my normal debt-hating rants, I would agree with this. In the short run, over a year or so, there will be very few businesses expanding, requiring large loans to finance their growth. Unfortunately, debt, like diamonds, is forever. Or practically forever since we never seem to plan to pay any of it off. While borrowing money right now won't crowd out the private sector because the private sector has no hunger for money, except those that need it to sustain operations like the plumbing contractor example in my previous post, if you look beyond 2009, it will starve the rest of us for cash.

Not looking beyond the short-term is exactly what got us here. Not good.

Missing from this analysis is what all of this borrowing will do to the rest of the world as they try to borrow like mad, too.

Politicians Aren't Always Wise

... now there's a surprise!

Frequent and valued commenter Dean posed this conundrum in a recent comment.

KT, what I have found fascinating about all this is, despite all the analysis that's been done on the financial crisis including yours, which has been excellent by the way, the "solution(s)" are derived straight out of "things we learned in kindergarten".

As you pointed out, there are consequences that apply across the board with respect to economic behavior whether you are 14 yrs. old or 40 and whether you are the head of a household of one or the CEO of a Wall St. firm.

He's absolutely right. Finances aren't that complicated. Work hard, acquire valuable skills, save money. At a national level, you need to encourage these things. It seems simple, but we're dealing with fallible human beings who have personal goals not always in concert with national goals.

Politicians want votes. They work very hard learning to how to win votes. They may or may not know how to do anything else. Take the case of Robert Rubin. The conventional wisdom right now is that George Bush was a horrible president and Bill Clinton was a good one. Just one look at their respective economic records will convince you of that, right?

However, Clinton's Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, the supposed architect of all that Clintonian prosperity, has helped wreck Citigroup. Rubin advised them to get into the subprime market and they blew $20B. Rubin didn't fall and bump his head on his way from the Treasury to Citigroup. He's been the same Robert Rubin all along.

The truth of the matter is that Robert Rubin doesn't know what he's doing. He didn't know when he worked for Bill Clinton and he didn't know when he was with Citigroup. He didn't need to know what he was doing because his job never asked that of him.

Robert Rubin never had economic prosperity or long-term economic stability as his primary goals. Not as Treasury Secretary and not as Citigroup advisor.

At the Treasury, Rubin's goal was to help Bill Clinton and the Democrats win votes. Short-term prosperity was guaranteed to accomplish this. Long-term prosperity might or might not do it. Over at Citigroup, Rubin's goal was to earn big bonuses for himself and his fellow executives. That Citigroup is now collapsing doesn't diminish his accomplishments there - after all, he walked out with over $150,000,000. Citigroup is now just so much smoking wreckage, but Robert Rubin is a success.

Going back to the central theme of this blog, prudiciousness, I would argue that our culture is what really gets us in the end. People like Robert Rubin have always been around. Politicians have always striven for votes. What's different now is the underlying set of values in our nation. We have decoupled earning from having in our values. That's what is leading us to these phenomenal levels of debt and what led us to elect a man who epitomizes this shift in our values, Barack Obama.

Please do not let Robert Rubin Near Anything I Cherish

... he's looking for new things to wreck help.

Jan. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Robert Rubin, the former Treasury secretary who advised Citigroup Inc. as it lost $20 billion in the subprime mortgage crisis, resigned his position as senior counselor and won’t stand for re-election to the board.

Rubin’s departure comes as Citigroup and Morgan Stanley are in talks to merge their brokerage units, said a person familiar with the matter. Rubin, 70, intends to “deepen his involvement in outside activities and organizations to which he has been strongly committed,” the New York-based bank said in a statement on Jan. 9.

Rubin, who served at the Treasury’s helm from 1995 to 1999 under President Bill Clinton, was criticized by investors for collecting more than $150 million in pay in a decade while failing to steer Citigroup away from subprime securities. The investments led to four straight quarterly losses and prompted the bank to turn to the government for a rescue package.

Emphasis mine.

Rubin's on the loose. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Cheezburger of the Day

more animals

Across the Theocracy Today

... you can find some great posts. Here are a few.

Our Official Artist has the latest news from Apple. Or maybe not.

Our Grand Inquisitor has a post that is revealing in two ways.

Our Friar of Fatherhood has a great video on ... ice fishing!

The Liberator Today (not yet inducted into the Theocracy) delves into the Somali pirates.

Our Monks of Miscellaneous Musings post about California's effort to save money by giving kids more free time. No, really!

Thoughts on Gold and Treasuries

... from someone who doesn't know what he's doing*.

Yesterday, I posted a link to a chart of TBT. TBT is a fund that moves inversely with Treasuries. When Treasury auctions start becoming sticky because Obama will be flooding the world with US debt, TBT will go up.

Unless it doesn't.

I don't like TBT. I don't like gold, either. I don't like anything governments can manipulate with ease. Governments in extremis will reach out and grab anything they can to keep them afloat. Russia has sold some of its gold reserves in the past. Other countries have printed money to buy their own bonds. Both of these investments are subject to governmental manipulation to a high degree. Other investments, such as oil, are too vast and used too quickly to be easily manipulated.

Of course, the government has attacked oil companies in a variety of ways with windfall profits taxes and putting certain areas off limits to exploration and development, but these are much less direct than what they can do with Treasuries and gold.

I also didn't agree with the Money Week article suggesting it was time to sell Treasuries. "Sell them and go into what?" is what I wondered as I read it. Personally, I don't own them, but I don't run a big fund, either. If I did, I'm not sure I'd be able to find a good alternative. If I had a billion dollars to invest for a pack of finicky and demanding clients, Treasuries might look awful good given the performance of other investments.

These are just my thoughts right now. After reading and learning more, I might change my mind.

* - If you want to hear from someone who knows what he's doing, read Jim Jubak.

More on Sovereign Debt

MoneyWeek is advising people to start selling government bonds. I'm not sure I agree, but here's their thought process.

American bonds "have garbage fundamentals", says Dyson, "the US Treasury's about to flood the market with supply. As well as increasing the size of its bond auctions, it has also upped the frequency from eight times a year to 12".

We're talking vast numbers here, as not just the Americans need to raise loads of cash. The US alone is expected to issue $2trn (£1.3trn) of debt this year, says the Telegraph's Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, and the Europeans aren't far behind. "Italy alone must tap the markets for €200bn as it rolls over its huge stock of public debt". Further, ratings agency Fitch has said that Ireland, Greece, Holland and France all face big auction programmes.

And as for gilts, don't ask. Fitch says Britain has a "terrible underlying fiscal picture, by far the worst" of the mainstream countries. That adds up to £145bn of debt – 10% of GDP – just in 2009 ...

This week, even Germany only managed to sell just two-thirds of a €6bn sale of ten-year Bunds, whose yield has plunged to long-term lows of some 3%. "It's very poor", says Monument Securities' Marc Ostwald, "I can't remember the Bundesbank ever being left with a third of the bonds". Nor is confidence likely to be much improved by yesterday's news that the German government is being forced to shell out another €10bn on a second Commerzbank bailout in less than three months.

Ouch.

Warner Robbins Sunrise

A friend at work, a real East Coast one-upper, sent me this sunrise picture in response to my Pacific sunset photos. I like it a lot.

Starving the World of Money

Two days ago, blogging friend Tim Eisele left this comment on a short post of mine about the Germans having a failed debt auction.

This is related to something that's been bugging me ever since I saw that "Quantitiative Easing" video you posted a while back. It basically said that the banks were afraid to lend money normally, so instead they were buying Treasury bonds - loaning their money to the government instead of to people and businesses who could actually use it.

This made me think, "Doesn't this mean that the problem isn't that other investments are too risky, but that the government has made Treasuries too attractive?" The obvious solution isn't to pump in more money, but to make Treasuries a less attractive invesment.

I kind of suspect that a significant part of our troubles right now, is that the government has been borrowing too much all along, and have already sucked up all the funds available for loaning. They have been trying to use this money for "stimulus", but Treasuries are *still* too attractive, and the banks just use the stimulus money to buy *more* Treasuries. Now that all the air has been sucked out of the business loans, goverments are going to be competing to steal loan money from *each other*.

I totally agree with Tim. I thought I'd reply to it in a blog post since it goes into something I've wanted to explore anyway.

The problem is not just the rate of return on Treasuries.  It's also the fact that there are so much of them to buy.  In an environment where business investments all look like losers, anything that will keep the banks' money safe will be seen as a good investment, even if it returns nothing.  The government has been trying to lower the returns on Treasuries in the hopes of forcing banks to lend, but until Treasuries leap off the computer screen and start beating you with a stick, they'll be more attractive than, say, loaning money to ALCOA.

The mammoth stimulus package that Obama is considering is going to make matters much, much worse.  All of that money has to be borrowed.  It's borrowed by auctioning off government debt.  As we've seen, government debt at any price is better than any commercial investment right now.  In an attempt to revive the economy, Obama is going to starve it of funds.  Remember, all jobs come from profits.  It can't possibly work.

It gets worse.

Everyone around the world, with the exceptions of Germany and Australia, are doing the same thing.  The Germans, in a fit of Prussian stubbornness and the Aussies in typical Aussie self-reliance, are pushing very modest stimulus packages.  Everyone else is going bananas with their checkbooks. From what I've read, government borrowing across the globe will triple this year.  There will be no lack of government securities to compete with commercial firms who live on borrowed money.

Example: a plumbing subcontractor waits to get paid by the general contractor who waits to get paid by you who waits to pay until the remodel is finished.  Between now and when your new kitchen remodel is done, the plumber lives off of borrowed money.  It's not a violation of Dave Ramsey's principles, it's the way the business works.

Back to the world.  Greece is a financial basket case.  They need to borrow money to keep afloat.  What will it take to get you to buy Greek bonds when German bonds are available? The Germans just had a failed auction and might now have to raise their interest rates in order to attract money because money is rushing into US bonds.  Once the US goes on its mad spending spree, lots and lots and lots of money will rush into US bonds and the rest of the world will either have to keep raising rates or simply default on its payments. What does this mean for Greece?

Greece has to outbid Germany who has to outbid the US.  The US (for now) can just sit there and issue debt and watch it get snarfed up because we're the ultimate safe haven.

Commercial firms will have to outbid the US, too.  Good luck with that.

The solution: Suck it up.  Stop borrowing and spending.  Accept mammoth unemployment and bread lines.  You aren't going to escape it no matter what you do.  You can only postpone it.  Postponing it will make it worse when it finally happens.

About three years ago, right about the time I started this blog, I went through some very tough times.  I had to save money for 6 weeks in order to be able to afford to take a load of rubbish to the dump.  That cost $15.  I shopped at thrift stores and estate sales.  I paid down my debts and now I can afford a Nikon D60 and a Sony AVCHD Handycam.  Had I continued to borrow and spend, I'd be in far worse shape now.

There is no discontinuity as a function of size.  That is, what works at the micro layer works at the macro layer as well.  At no point does the world turn upside down and entities smaller than some size must pay off their debts, but entities larger than some size can borrow to infinity.

Things to watch: Eventually, the world's appetite for Treasuries will wane.  Our big investors, China and Japan, are contracting, too.  Even if they wanted to spend all their money buying Treasuries, they're going to have less money to do it.  If you want to track the decline of Treasuries, watch TBT.  TBT shorts Treasuries.  That is, if the US debt auctions go well, TBT goes down.  If the world slows down it's purchase of Treasuries, TBT goes up.

Update: Check out this comment over at Across the Curve. It's a fantastic summary of the situation.

Blogging has Been Light Today

... because quiet time with the keyboard has been impossible to find.

Quote of the Day

... comes from Caroline Baum.

If putting people to work is the goal, we could get rid of all the heavy earth-moving equipment and go back to digging ditches with shovels.

Why stop there? If it takes one man two days to dig a trench three feet deep and 30 feet long with a shovel, how long would it take 100 men using spoons?

H/T: Mish.

Where do you get a Trillion Dollars?

...why, from the rest of the world, of course.

German bond auctions failed recently because no one wanted to buy their debt. German debt auctions failed. Imagine what Greece and Italy and Spain will find when they go to auction off theirs.

Thanks to Obama, the US's image in the world will improve dramatically. That is, until we start gorging ourselves on investment money taken out of their countries. Then, we won't be liked so much any more.

No Photoshop Needed

... because God provided us with a sunset that needs no touch-ups.

:-)


Go ahead and click on it. He made it just for you.

Dino for my Financial Guru

Now that's some good music!

Why I'm Proud to Have Voted for George Bush

... because the choice was between Bush and Gore and then Bush and Kerry. Those were and still remain easy choices to make.

Reason 1: Geopolitics and oil aside, rescuing a nation from a murderous, tyrannical madman is a good thing. So is converting a sponsor of terrorism with massive oil reserves into a democracy. So is surrounding Iran with our allies. All three of them together is the trifecta.

She is free to live a happy life. With Kerry or Gore, she would not be.
Reason 2: Despite the Republicans' horrific mismanagement of the Federal budget and regulation of the banking system, the Democrats would have been worse.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President-elect Barack Obama says the nation probably faces huge deficits for years to come, but heavy spending is needed now to spur the economy.

Obama said Tuesday the deficit appears on track to hit $1 trillion soon. Speaking to reporters after meeting with top economic aides, Obama said: "Potentially we've got trillion-dollar deficits for years to come, even with the economic recovery that we are working on."

The Democrats have lost all connection with private enterprise and the free market. Obama and Pelosi and Reid are going to decouple spending from income entirely. This is insane on any level. This is what the Democrats have been preaching all along.

All of the criticism of President Bush poses a false choice: President Bush vs. a competent and wise leader. That was not the choice we faced in either election. In both cases, it was President Bush vs. a naive, incompetent, statist boob. With President Bush we got bravery, determination and marginal competence.

Even in hindsight, I would confidently make the same choice again.

Cheezburger of the Day

more animals

Blogging Will be Light Today

... for a variety of reasons. If you want to read some really good analysis and predictions for 2009, stop by and see what Mish has to say. He's usually my first read in the morning.

January Sunset

There are times when I miss my old house that overlooked Mission Bay and the Pacific. Like those times when it's clear the sunset is going to be a good one and I have to jump in the car and race to a spot to get a photo before it's gone to gray.

This one is worth clicking on to get the full view. It was much better about 5 minutes before I took this picture, but all I could do was watch it decay while I drove.


Times like this are pretty rare in San Diego. We either get an overcast horizon or a perfectly clear sky. Good sunsets need a clear horizon and some clouds overhead.

Why we Don't Want to Give the Government any More Power

... because we get gobbledygook like this in our government employment forms.

Executive Order 12721 Eligible
You are eligible for this hiring category if you meet the definition below:

Applicants who worked overseas as an appropriated fund Federal Employee, while a family member of a civilian, non-appropriated fund or uniformed service member serving overseas, for an accumulated total of 52 weeks and who received a fully successful (pass) or better performance appraisal. This appointment eligibility is effective for a period of three years following the date of return from overseas to the United States to reassume residence.

In spite of mountains of rules and regulations like this, we still get people like Blago trying to sell Obama's Senate seat and Bill Richardson slithering out of DC leaving a trail of slime behind him.

Inefficiency and corruption! It's the Daily Double!

Who Will be Squeezed out by American Borrowing?

Jim Jubak argues it will be the emerging markets. Watch his video discussion of that and see what you think.

No Coffee, No Bloggee

I didn't go shopping this weekend. We ran out of coffee. We blog later. Now we go search for coffee.

Shoplifting Dog

Typical. Just typical.

H/T: Namara Pets.

Red States, Blue States, all States got Problems

Mish posted today about state budget shortfalls. We've all heard about the blue states fiscal woes as the Democrats are running off to DC hoping Obama will bring forth a rain of greenbacks upon them, but what of the red states? Our buddy Scipio is concerned that the red states will end up being robbed to pay for profligate liberals. Well, two of the reddest of the red, Georgia and Utah, are also in big trouble. So what are they doing about it?

They're cutting their spending. Georgia may end up $3B in the red.

How serious are Georgia lawmakers taking the situation?

House Speaker Glenn Richardson (R-Hiram) and Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, the Senate’s president, said Wednesday that both chambers are putting a hold on politically popular special project grants to communities and organizations, which are commonly called “pork” at the Capitol.

“As we face a significant budget shortfall in our state, the Senate is working to identify essential government spending, prioritize that spending and find further efficiencies,” Cagle said. “Local assistance grants should not be exempt from consideration.”

In Utah, the budget may be $1B in the red.

When it comes to Utah, the report concluded, "Considering the circumstances, the state is doing relatively well. Officials still have options, such as the rainy day fund ($414 million) or bonding to get through the shortfall."

But the analysts at the organization, based in Washington, D.C., also sounded a note of caution about Utah's fiscal future: "Nevertheless, officials face some difficult choices in the 2009 general session."

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. has rolled out his plan for dealing with those choices, a $10.6 billion budget that includes across-the- board cuts of as much as 7 percent that likely mean employee layoffs, as well as a $50 million increase in motor-vehicle registration fees.

Over at Scipio's blog, I cautioned against red state gloating. Having read a little more about what the various states are doing, I'd suggest that Georgia and Utah are rolling up their sleeves and dealing with the problem like adults. I'm not so sure about the others.

New Year's Resolutions - What Skills Will You Gain This Year?

I've got two primary goals for 2009 for developing new skills. First, I want English grammar to be second nature. For example, I'm still unsure about where to put commas when I use quotation marks in my prose. To accomplish this, I'll keep a copy of my Strunk and White right next to the computer and look up everything and I mean absoltuely everything that I am unsure of.

I'll also stop ending sentences with prepositions.

Second, I want to become facile with Adobe Creative Suite. That includes Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator and Premiere. I'll start with Photoshop and begin posting more retouched, stylized photos like the one I did of the drainage pipe. Right now, I don't understand how they do layering or how to create masks. As I go along, I'll post my creations and the Photoshop tools I used to make them.

How about you? What will you be able to do on January 1, 2010 that you can't do right now?

Update: Adobe has Adobe TV which shows you basic tutorials for their products, including Photoshop. Way cool.

Today's Blog Safety Tip

In the interest of making sure all of our blog readers avoid injury, I will posting safety tips from time to time. Here's today's.

This blog containst posts with small words such as "a", "I", "an", "we" and so forth. These words may become dislodged while reading and pose a choking hazard to infants and toddlers. Please keep this blog out of reach of everyone below the age of 2.

The Ultimate Contest for Project Runway

Design a sexy housecoat for a 315# woman.

Tim (after prancing into the back room where the designers are laboring away on hideous garments): I don't know, Ssssuede. I'm jusssst not sssseing it.
In the movie version, Gary Cooper will play Tim.

Or maybe not.

Flowing Data

Is a way cool site that I found from a link by Paul Kedrosky. If you like clever visualizations of data, it's a fantastic site. Here's a tiny bit of what they post.

The Financial Crisis and our Culture

First there is this description of what is happening from a successful investment counselor:

Q Do you think political leaders and central bankers are on the right track in trying to solve the problems?
A What they are doing with these interest rates is totally cosmetic because whether the interest rate is 2% or zero makes absolutely no difference. People are scared out of their wits, scared of losing their jobs, scared that they don't have enough money to pay the rent. You see it already from the banks. All the banks want to do is get their balance sheets in shape so they won't go bust. Every corporation in the land is going to cut back so it won't go bust. That's called a balance-sheet depression because what they are trying to do is make sure that they are not going to go bust and they will do anything to get rid of costs, to get rid of debt in order to survive. And whether you give money at 1%, 2% or 10%, history has shown that people don't borrow until their house is strictly in order, they didn't go out and spend money.

Q What alarms you the most right now?
A What alarms me the most isn't just one thing. We are going into this in the worst financial shape that you can possibly imagine, where the public hasn't saved for something like five or six years, and we started out with a complete collapse of the world banking system.

Q How would you fix it?
A This is not curable the way a normal recession is curable; 1929 wasn't. It's a balance-sheet recession, not a temporary lowering in demand or the inflation recession of the 1970s. The inflation recession got rid of the debt. If you attack this the way you would a normal recession, that's exactly the wrong way.

Q Does this mean you are not satisfied with the solutions tabled so far?
A Absolutely, I never underestimate the stupidity of mankind, which is based on greed and fear and what they do when they are afraid or too greedy. When the emotions rule, you can be sure it will lead to some form of stupidity of one form or another. The idea of saving GM [General Motors Corp.] is the dumbest thing in the world. Let it go bankrupt, let it go renegotiate its wages and put them on the comparable level paid by its competitors.

Next there is this conclusion from an academic paper on why our savings rate is so small.

National saving rates have been declining dramatically in developed countries in recent decades. This paper estimates two models for the U.S., France, and Italy, with both models featuring uncertain future rates of social time-preference. In one model, current social decision makers remain in charge over time. The second model incorporates time-inconsistency under which current social decision makers can only indirectly influence future social decision makers via the amount of capital they leave for their successors.

Parameter estimates from both models show that shifts in societal preferences, which have placed ever greater weight on immediate grati…cation, are the principal reason that the U.S., France, and Italy are saving at much lower rates now than they did in the past. Of course, most future consumption and leisure will be done by future generations. Hence, our results are, in part, indicative of growing intergenerational selfishness.

This isn't a financial crisis. It's a cultural one.

Oh, but fie upon gravity! Let's make merry once more and forget our troubles. How about if we rock out to this flower child, counterculture, do-what-makes-you-feel-groovy chestnut from Crosby, Stills and Nash!

There, doesn't that make you feel better? Thanks, guys. Thanks a lot. We owe you so much.

So very much.

A Counterpoint

... to my incessant rantings about debt.

Even a $2 trillion increase would push the U.S. debt to about 53 percent of the overall economy, "only a few percentage points above where it was in the early 1990s," Lilly writes, noting that plummeting interest rates show that "much of the world seems not only willing but anxious to invest in U.S. Treasurys, which are seen as the safest security that an investor can own in a risky world economy." ...

As for the specter of default, Steven Hess, lead U.S. analyst for Moody's Investors Service, said even a $2 trillion increase in borrowing would not greatly diminish the U.S. financial condition. "It's not alarmingly high by our AAA standards," he said. "So we don't think there's pressure on the rating yet."

Hmmm.

A Trillion Here, a Trillion There

... and pretty soon you're talking real money.

A group of Democratic governors warned Friday that without as much as $1 trillion in federal assistance, many states will not be able to pay their bills in the next year ... The group has presented its plan to the transition team and congressional leaders. The New Jersey governor said both have been receptive to the idea.

I give up.

Thomas Frank Looks for Wisdom in all the Wrong Places

My financial guru turned me on to this WSJ article by Thomas Frank about how 2008 showed that the market wasn't so wise after all.

As I read the last tranche of disastrous news stories from this catastrophic year, I found myself thinking back to the old days when it all seemed to work, when everyone agreed what made an economy go and the stock market raced and the commentators and economists and politicians of the world stood as one under the boldly soaring banner of laissez-faire ...

But something went wrong on the road to privatopia. If everything is for sale, why shouldn't the guardians put themselves on the block as well? Now we find that the profit motive, unleashed to work its magic within the credit-rating agencies, apparently exposed them to pressure from debt issuers and led them to give high ratings to the mortgage-backed securities that eventually blew the economy to pieces.

And so it goes. Free market capitalism failed us. We would have done better if we just would have regulated it more. If only we had watched the henhouse more carefully, the hens would still be there, laying eggs for us all!

Who is this "we," Thomas? Would this be the same "we" that has a huge prison population, the majority of which came from single parents that "we" in our wisdom decided were morally equivalent to married parents? Is this the same "we" that has a savings rate near zero? The same "we" that just held an election between an economic illiterate and an inexperienced, statist nincompoop monitored by a journalism industry that is so fundamentally clueless about finances that their companies are all going bankrupt? The same "we" that values this more than this?

Just where did you expect this wisdom to come from?

Elections and markets are no wiser than the people that constitute them. I submit that a people who have run up a $10T+ debt, who do not respect marriage and who run screaming from even the tiniest amount of self-denial aren't going to make a wise anything, whether those people gather in markets of a few dozen Obama advisors or 350,000,000 ordinary Americans.

The problem isn't free market capitalism, Thomas. The problem is us.

Your homework for tonight is to read some Dave Ramsey and then read some St. Augustine. Come back and write about wisdom after that. At least then you'll have been exposed to the real thing.

The Lord Hornblower out of San Diego

I love the way my Nikon D60 captures colors. I know this is a trite image, but I wanted to share it with you anyway. Here's the Lord Hornblower coming in from their morning whale watching cruise. I think they were a lot more successful than we were.

I Will Increase My State Exemptions in 2009

... because California might not be able to pay me my refund. Dig this.

If you expect you'll be getting a refund from California when you file your 2008 state income tax return, be prepared: you may instead receive a "registered warrant." Translation: an IOU.

California is rapidly running out of money. Blame it on the state budget deficit that continues to bleed billions of dollars from California's reserves. Facing inadequate credit to make up the difference, California's Controller John Chiang warns that by the end of February, the nation's most populous state may not be able to pay some of its debts, and instead be reduced to issuing those creditors IOUs.

As soon as this gets out into the general public, everyone will do this and California will be in even worse shape than before as no one will pay even close to the amount they owe for fear of risking a refund on their 2009 taxes.

So where is all the money going? Welfare and the education industry, baby. Parasites, every one of them. Dig this chart, taken from the State of California Franchise Tax Board site. You may need to click on it to be able to read the text.


40% goes to pay for an education establishment that produces absolute garbage. Another 12% goes to a bunch of left-wing creeps that want to teach young adults to hate me.

You want my money? Come and get it in April, 2010. Atlas is about to shrug.

Start the New Year with a New Day

I found this idea particularly clever. I might just try it.

How Did Your Blog do in 2008?

With my recent topical conversion of this blog from mostly politics to mostly economics, I'm afraid I've lost a few of my regular readers along the way. Hoping that's not the case, let me pose a question for you that you might answer on your own blog if you have one. If you do post an answer, I'll be sure to link to it here.

Did your blog do what you wanted it to do in 2008? Was it worth the time spent?

For me, the answer is an unequivocal yes to both questions. This blog exists to chronicle my journey through self-education. It also exists to promote my moral and philosophical views, very succinctly and cleverly described by frequent commenter Dean as "prudiciousness" - judicious prudery.

Success at achieving the latter goal is obvious in the growing library of posts I have yelling from my bloggy pulpit about St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine and Dave Ramsey. The former goal, self-education, has been a signal achievement of this blog. Here's short list, in no particular order, of what I've learned because of the way blogging has focused my thought processes.

• Watching the election unfold, I gained an understanding of the limited usefulness of political talk radio. I used to listen to Rush and others, but in working my way through my own political philosophy, I have little time for them any more. An exception to this is Dennis Prager.


• I learned that politics is an interesting diversion, but it's not personally useful. There has been much more applicability to my explorations in economics.


• Political discussions in comment threads can quickly devolve into the vile and are rarely illuminating. The discussions on technical blog posts can be nasty, but are frequently educational.


• Photoshop is a fun thing to play with. Even a very rigid thinker like myself can find creative things to do with it.


• Sunsets and clouds are very perishable things. Carry a camera around with you at all times.


• You can't change people's minds by mocking them or yelling at them. Still, it's (evil) fun to just rip someone to shreds in a blog post now and again.


• People who disagree with you can teach you a lot. Even if you conclude that they're wrong, they force you to clarify your own thinking.


• The growth of blogging and the decline of newspapers proves again what happens when barriers to entry fall for a particular industry.


• Dittos for music and film. I don't watch TV any more. I watch YouTube.


• The blogosphere offers so much in the way of educational opportunities. With a little effort, you can find people smarter and more educated than yourself to follow and learn from.


• Hannah Montana is 20x more powerful than macroeconomics.


• People who stop by to read your blog and leave comments are as precious as diamonds. It's their interaction with your material that makes blogging its most rewarding experience.

How about you? What did blogging do for you in 2008?