Playing with our children’s future

[Carl Russell]

I have been teaching our 6 year old how to play Craps, Black-Jack, and 5-Card Draw Poker. He is a number wiz, started reading a tape ruler before the alphabet.

These three games are typically associated with gambling, but that is not what I am trying to teach him. He is practicing math, finding patterns, counting money, and experiencing probabilities. As he perfects holding the cards, finding good hands, and deciding on strategy, I help him to understand some of the possibilities.

Over the last couple of days VPR has been running interviews with state and federal leaders about the financial crisis. They’re all talking about the upcoming stimulus package as if it’s a done deal. They’re quoting economists who are recommending that we spend our way out of this recession. It’s absurd. Find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

These guys are “All In”, betting our future on an inside straight, with the federal reserve smiling like a lone shark.

They’re supposed to be “Leaders”. They’re supposed to be “Adults”. They are absolutely brainless.

I’m teaching my kid when to fold, and when to cash in, and never draw on an inside straight.

I’m also teaching him, and his brother and sister how to build a fire in the down-pouring rain, how to shoot straight, and how to cover their tracks.

Happy Darn New Year.

Carl

[CharlyBonifaz]

No cussing 😉
I do wish everybody down your way a healthy, peaceful and Happy New Year!
Here we got about 8 minutes to go; need to dig out the firecrackers…..
elke

[416Jonny]

I gotta tell ya Carl, having worked for the government for longer than I would have liked, no one ever said you had to know what you’re doing in order to make executive decisions.

I came under the impression a little while back while working for Erik Andrus that my best chance to succeed in this world is if one of two things happened. If things go a whole lot better, I could work away to afford to slowly build my farm next door to Erik. You know, have all the neat toys.

The other option would be to have the whole system collapse. I have amassed quite a collection of skills that haven’t applied a great deal to modern life, but turns out in survivial situations I can hold my own with some of the best out there.

I just wish we could take this thing off life support and let the free market have a chance to work. Doesn’t sound like our “free market” has done us much good so far. I would rather see us have to work through some hard times and end up with some new (depending on your point of view) and different opportunities, than drag our feet around in some sort of vague national welfare.

Just remeber, the CEO’s of Chrysler and GM make roughly 23 million a year each. The CEO of Toyota makes just over 120K a year. They aren’t hurting that badly, they just have rather skewed senses of entitlement. In 1960, the CEO of GM made only 20K a year more than the highest paid line worker.

People will always need water, food, shelter and fuel. If we can cover those four things, we’ll always have work, or atleast a way to survive.

I spent a year in Iraq drinking piss warm water, eating MRE’s, sleeping in a cot under a tin roof and stinking like diesel to stay warm during the winter. I had it good.

At some point, it’s gotta fail. Maybe not this rescession, but soon enough. It may all turn out to be a great opportunity for those of us prepared, either through skill sets or infrastructure.

Just a thought.

Oh, yeah, Happy New Year!

Jonny B.

[jen judkins]

Johnny, I love the ‘life support’ analogy! As a physician…I am totally in favor of pulling the plug…and would wait breathlesly to see who and what bubbled to surface. If ever there was a need for a ‘do over’, now is the time!

Course I’ll have to take fire starting lessons from Basil:p Would you loan him, Carl?

[416Jonny]

I’m not sure if this qoute fits exactly to what we’re talking about, but I always enjoy reading Gene Logsdon, so here we go:

“The problem I fear is that while we are condemned by the economics of money greed, or changing markets, or weather patterns, to continue the inexorable cycles of small and large, boom and bust, consolidation and dispersal, the power of wealth solidified in the current cycle will try to stop the wheel of history from turning to the next cycle. Expect a vigorous effort on the part of the agribusiness oligarchy, in cahoots with a suppliant government, to prolong the bonanza farm consolidation of today as long as it can. Some of this futility will be justified to prevent a period of chaos in readjustment, just as the futile attempt to “save the family farm” of the last cycle was justified for a similiar reason. But prolonging the end of the current cycle of consolidated power will be much more potentially dangerous because of those being “helped” will not be family farmers but the wealthy classes who need no help. Expect the power structure to continue the present policy of giving welfare capital shamelessly to the rich in the name of saving society from starvation. Expect it to continue legal favoristism to the food monopolies.”

From “Living at Nature’s Place”.

Part of our current economic “crash” has to do alot with stretching ourselves beyond all reason. As far as the auto industry (something I have some exposure to) goes, the manufacturers have some amazing restrictions to smash themselves into. Between safety, emissions, CAFE compliance, retirement payments, insurance, depreciating infrastructure, competition with other manufacturers, increased consumer expectations and any other weight that can be thrown on top of them. The only way out from under this for them is to sell more vehicles. In the late 1980’s the automaker’s pushed leasing programs like it was the cool thing to do. Then in the early and mid 1990’s the automakers were now having to compete with a HUGE influx of perfectly good used cars left over from lease deals.

Things are going to change, in one way or another. Welfare programs for corporations (was there gonna be any free market in there?) is getting in the way of the ebb and flow of an economy. The worse that could happen is if Toyota, Subaru, BMW, Honda or anyother foreign manufacturer survived the mess. They are the only one’s building cars in America anymore. Ford will probably survive, only on account of the fact that they build most of their cars in Brazil, in the most automated facility the industry has.

But then again, I don’t want everything to go to hell either. My cousin Robin is 13 with diabetes, glasses, braces and an unconfirmed gluten allergy. I don’t want to see her get in trouble because of the inability to recieve enough medical care. Even though I think it’s good to keep kids off the TV umbilical cord, I don’t want any kids to starve, either. These kinds of situation are of course when family and friends come together to help.

I’ve heard it said that adversity doesn’t build character, it merely reveils it.

When I first came down to the bedroom of Massachussetts, I was taken back by the kids that grew up in the area. They seemed oblivious of the world around them. How they get fed, how they get warm, how they stay out of the weather, etc. etc.

I can’t wait to get out of this place. If anyone has ever spent any time on Rt. 1, “the automile”, you know what I’m talking about. It’s an economic anomoly. It’s all of 12 something miles of car dealerships, box stores, chain restaurants, office parks and other commercial enterprises. This whole place will die once the economy tanks. It doesn’t even deserve to exist.

Oh, well, I’m sick and missed out on New Years, so I think I’ll try to keep some of that rambling to myself now.

Jonny B.

[Julie Clemons]

“However, an understanding of our economic discourse requires an appreciation of one of its basic rules: men of high position are allowed, by a special act of grace, to accommodate their reasoning to the answer they need. Logic is only required in those of lesser rank.”

John Kenneth Galbraith

Essential Galbraith, p. 53

[416Jonny]

“He was a very inferior farmer when he first began, but a prolonged and unflinching assault upon his agricultural difficulties has had its effect at last and he is now fast rising from affluence to poverty.”
– “Rev. Henry Ward Beecher’s Farm, ” Mark Twain, A Curious Dream, 1872 ed

“Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood”
– H.L. Menken

“There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.”
– Bertrand Russel

While I enjoy a good qoute battle as much as the next gentleman (I can imagine it now, sleepy little town some where in the southwest at dawn, two cloaked figures slowly emerging from different saloons to face off in the square, Colt’s and works of authors in hand), my feelings can be summed up by one of my favorite qoutes of all time, given by my favorite author:

“I wished it would just die already”
– “I give up for cryin’ out loud”, Jonathan Birkett, Thoughts of Kicking Government Officials, 2009 ed.

Sorry, the opportunity was there.

Jonny B.

[Gulo]

Carl – i was just reading this from “New York Magazine”: “The system really was about six hours from failing,” says Gene Lange, a manager at a midtown hedge fund, referring to the week in September when Lehman went bust and AIG had to be bailed out. “When you think about how close we were to the precipice, I don’t think it necessarily makes a guy crazy to prepare for the potential worst-case scenario.” along with this: “In his book Wealth, War and Wisdom published last year, former Morgan Stanley chief global strategist Barton Biggs advised people to prepare for the possibility of a total breakdown of civil society.”

And of course, many believe the crash has only been postponed by the bailouts – imaginary money – by several months. Hyperinflation, among many other dire things, seems a given now. Myself, when i look at the big picture today, I can contemplate that this is indeed “it.” We have been headed for crash since the first days of industrialization – it’s always just been a matter of when. I personally hope things crash fast, whenever it happens. It would be more merciful on many levels, and would be our best hope of getting back to a sustainable future for our children – those of us who survive, that is.

One thing’s sure – we’ve pretty much used the surplus of this world up. I doubt if we have the resources left to dig ourselves out this time.

[near horse]

I haven’t felt this bad since I dropped my keys in the outhouse hole and turned around to look at where they’d gone and promptly got stung on my bum by a yellowjacket:eek:

Seriously, what choices do we as individuals have? It’s unclear as to what will happen next so rather than having an ulcer over the whole thing (and I have one every time I listen to the financial news) we have to just keep moving forward and adjust on the go.

I have a hard time taking any information from brokers, analysts and advisors as having any credibility. They just haven’t gotten too many things right lately.

I don’t know about Barton Biggs, but Morgan Stanley was one firm that was integrally involved in speculating on oil that caused fuel prices to skyrocket over the summer. They took a lesson from Enron manipulating the power market in CA a few years back. They have a new movie coming out about their business model. It’s called “Scum-dog Millionaires:mad:”.

[near horse]

How about:

“Life is what happens while you’re waiting for something else.” I think that one was actually a John Lennon quote.

It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees. Emeliano Zapata

I know of no way of judging the future but by the past.
Patrick Henry

A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.
Thomas Paine

Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich–something for nothing.
George Bernard Shaw

(I would replace the word “property” with “the investment portfolio”)

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