JustThinking.us

 

I'm heading out for a two week vacation.

Usually, The Little Wiffer insists on a vacation spent if not at the full 90 mph, a for sure 60.

This time we'll be mostly hanging out at a friends cottage.

I may post a little if I can obtain a consistent connection, but I'm making no promises.

For purposes of score keeping, as of this writing, Serbia is out of the World Cup, and I'm out a hundred.

Spain is still alive as is my other hundred.

The "Head and Shoulders" top in US treasury debt never broke through the neckline and resumed it's climb, putting me upside down on my short there.

I'd give damn near anything to know how to get a good chart out of MetaStock two times in a row.

I'm still holding that trade as it has a very long fuse.

With regards to "The Bradley Model" and "the summer of doom", the jury is still out.

The Dow Jones Industrial average is forming the same Head and Shoulders top pattern that let me down so despicably with the Ten Year Treasuries.

I'm up some on my shorts, but would prefer to be completely wrong on this one as many (most) of my best friends are ignoring my pleas.

I'm short a little, they're long a bunch.

In the interest of full disclosure, if I were short a bunch, I'd probably be demonstrating a far less charitable attitude toward my friend's finances.

I've posted below a very nice vid of my very favorite band of the last 20 years, BR5-49.

Category, "Nothing To Do With Anything" is now the go to archive for all the video that's been posted here.

Enjoy your Fourth of July weekend, and as always, be reminded of the wisdom of Sgt. Phil Esterhaus.

 

 

 

I have spent a lot of time in my life going to the bar to see a band.

Easily my favorite band of the last 20 years, and one of my very favorite bands of all time is BR5-49.

I put em right up there with The Clash.

They made two great records, a great EP, and three or four more real solid records.

They were even better live.

The Little Wiffer and I drove to see them nearly every time they got to within a hundred miles of home, a couple times I'm pretty sure we took the kids.

Just to let em see how it's done.

We were not alone, people drove all over the country to see "the boys".

Just maybe not quite enough people.

It's probably testimony to the charmed life I've led, that one of the saddest nights of my life was going to the Ark to see the boys and finding out that Gary Bennett and Jay McDowell had left the band.

Damn!!!!!

They were a way great band and were even better guys.

They came out after every show I saw and hung out until everybody else had left or were kicked out, and were just plain fun to know.

One night, Donnie Herron sketched out the tunings he uses on his steel guitar for me.

I still have that napkin.

This is Chuck Mead on lead guitar and vocals, Gary Bennett on rhythm guitar and vocals, Donnie Herron "the future Governor of West (by God) Virginia" on the steel guitar (not to mention practically every other stringed instrument ever invented), "Smilin" Jay McDowell on the stand up bass ... "only 13 years old ladies and gentlemen" ... and Shaw Wilson playing drums.

BR5-49.

Little Ramona's Gone Hillbilly Nuts

 

 

I'll say it again ..... Damn!!!!!

 

 

I have no idea what either Mid Spread or CPD% means.

But my eyeballs tell me that the state of Illinois has come out of nowhere to both leap into the top ten and overtake the state of California on the latest update to the CMAVision.com list of likely international, municipal deadbeats.

California while having battled valiantly to hold it's position, increased its Mid Spread from 254.01 to a very impressive 353.47, but just could not keep up as Illinois charged (in every sense of the word) all the way to 368.60 with a CPD% of 27.87

You go Illinois. 

 

 

 

Chad Selweski, the local columnist for The Macomb Daily, published an opinion piece in Sunday's edition of that newspaper the beginning of which follows below.

The point of the article being that issues having to do with the deficit are extraordinarily difficult, and the real problem with Tea Party types being that they want to enjoy the services provided by government, they just don't want to pay for them.

Click anywhere below to read the entire article.

 

I wonder how our local Tea Party activists spent their Saturday afternoon.

How many took advantage of yesterday’s national forum, a teleconference held in 19 cities (including Detroit) and for thousands of individuals online, to seek solutions to the nation’s bulging budget deficit?

Organized by a nonpartisan group, AmericaSpeaks, the unprecedented event provided a sobering view of our country’s $13 trillion debt and the limited options facing Congress if it tries to tackle the problem.

 

The op-ed ends as follows:

 

Much of this entire fiscal responsibility issue centers on arithmetic, not politics.

 

The following is my reply.

 

To begin with .....

I'm not a member of any Tea Party affiliate.

I do like them and will support them.

I belong to no organized political party, I'm a Libertarian ..... probably.

Having said that.

Here are some ideas which if applied would probably enable principal payments on the deficit in year 1.

Not necessarily in this order.

 

1.  Remove all American troops and military bases from foreign soil, excepting those troops stationed within embassies.

Leave NATO, abandon Okinawa, and allow Europe, Japan, The House of Saud etc. to defend themselves.

American military personnel are presently posted on some 760 military sites within 63 countries.

I haven't checked it today, but most years our military budget has exceeded that of the rest of the world combined.

Europe is cutting military spending in response to their deficits because we defend them.

Europe, Japan and the rest of the world needs to defend itself.

Their defense ain't our job.

We need to maintain fearsome defensive military power.

We do not need offensive military weaponry such as carrier groups (they are nothing more than big assed targets anyway), long range bombers, etc.

Scrap half of them out.

We do not need to be maintaining military bases on foreign soil, anywhere.

And we damn sure don't need to be defending foreign despots while allowing them to abuse their own people.

Ya listening Faisel?

As an aside.

While you're at it, reduce our payment to the United Nations to a pro-rata share.

Those guys are hopelessly corrupt and largely a waste of skin.

 

2.  Raise the retirement age to 67 and 71.

From 1950 to 2005, life expectancy for an American male has increased from 65.47 to 75.2 years while the median retirement age has decreased from 66.9 years to 61.7 years.

At it's inception there were 41.9 workers per Social Security beneficiary, we are now pushing toward 3 workers per beneficiary.

As you would expect, we now have over 50 million beneficiaries, 10 million of which are collecting Social Security benefits for disabilities.

While we're on the subject, reviewing every last disability claimant seems prudent.

 

3.  Rather than paying 100% of medical costs for medicare and medicaid recipients and attempting to fix costs by legislation, provide for the federal government to reimburse 67% of all health care costs for those eligible for medicare and medicaid benefits.

Prudence will reign by virtue of people now being responsible for a third of their own medical expenses.

They can insure or not, negotiate or not, get care or not, but the fact that a third of the cost is skin (so to speak) will save a ton of money and probably improve care.

If you're flat broke, charities can and will pick up the slack.

Hell, you might be able to provide 30% to maybe 50% coverage for everybody else under that kind of an arrangement and still come out ahead.

And while we're on the subject.

 

4. Loser pays.

As a sop to my many and dear attorney friends, limiting liability is nonsense, but nuisances gotta pay.

 

5. Deduct the first $20,000 of income for every individual and corporate taxpayer, and apply a flat 20% tax on every dime of income thereafter, from every source, cash as well as the cash value of benefits.

End all payroll taxes, they're going into the general fund anyway.

Remove all deductions for mortgage interest, charitable contributions (Americans give because Americans give, the deduction is gravy ... lose it), IRA's, dependants, state and local taxes, depreciation, depletion ..... and every other damn thing.

 

Bigger incomes pay higher taxes.

Identical incomes pay identical taxes.

Account across the board, Cash in, Cash out.

While you're at it require public companies to account to shareholders exactly as they account to the IRS.

Businesses acquiring buildings and capital equipment can write purchases off in the year acquired (the economy will boom), that's cash out.  If buildings and equipment are sold or scrapped later on, that's cash in.  

Removing mortgage interest as a deductible item will cause huge problems in such a debt infested environment, and as such would probably have to be phased, do it as ruthlessly as possible.

In the interest of financing growth, you probably want interest to be a deductible item for business adventures, but not against personal income, you want to prohibit the LLC from buying the homestead, or at least deducting the mortgage interest.

Dividends should be a deduction at the corporate level (cash out) and income to the recipient (cash in) at the ordinary rate. 

Income from federal debt should be taxed at the same rate as all other income.

Capital gains should be taxed at the same rate as all other income.

 

6.  Close the Commerce Department, the Department of Education, and HUD, as well as the Department of Homeland Security (it's a joke).

Somebody has been stealing from HUD my entire adult life.

End it.

 

7.  Sell Fanny, Freddie, Ginnie Mae and whatever acronym handles student loans.

Never guarantee or imply a guarantee of anything or anybody, to anybody, ever again.

 

8.  Legalize it!  Then tax it.

 

9.  Tax foreign oil at the border ... big time.

Develop gasified coal (it worked for Hitler, it'll work for us), along with nuclear, wind, solar, etc.

 

10.  Invest a little money and finish the fence.

Invest a little more to find and deport every last illegal residing in this country.

While you're at it fine employers of illegals, while significantly reducing unemployment benefits.

Think it through.

Jobs will come open, wages will probably increase with subsequent increases in tax revenues and reductions in federal expenses.

That Compton might have to drive out to the fields and pick a little lettuce is a also good thing.

 

You may choose to disagree with individual items, but that there be one helluva start.

Do the arithmetic!!!

People should listen to their Uncle Roany ... I got answers.

 

 

The Economist offers a very brief article, and an outstanding interactive map which seeks to demonstrate the volume of world debt.

Click anywhere below to link to the site.

Highly recommended.

 

The headlines are all about sovereign debt at the moment.

But that is only part of the problem.

Debt has risen across the economy, from consumers on credit cards, though industrial companies borrowing for expansion and financial companies using debt to buy risky assets.

The interactive graphic below shows the overall debt levels for a wide range of countries, based on data supplied by the McKinsey Global Institute.

In theory there is no maximum level for debt relative to GDP, but Ireland and Iceland (not on this map) found the limit in practice when they hit eight-to-ten times GDP.

The debt is also broken down by sector.

Note the huge size of Britain’s banks relative to its economy, and the high level of Spanish corporate debt.

These figures will worry owners of government bonds since the 2008 crisis showed that governments may be forced to stand behind private sector debt.

 

   

 

 

I've seen this one come around two different ways, the first as attributed to a Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret) as below, the second by the guy at Munchkin Wrangler found here.

I think it's a really well reasoned essay, so I'm grabbing it.

With regards to it's author, ... my conscience is satisfied.

 

Why The Gun In Civilization?

By Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret)

Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force.

If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception.

Reason or force, that's it.

In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.

When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force.

The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single gay guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats.

The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.

There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we'd be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a [armed] mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger's potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat--it has no validity when most of a mugger's potential marks are armed.

People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that's the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.

Then there's the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser. People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don't constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level.

The gun is the only weapon that's as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply wouldn't work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn't both lethal and easily employable.

When I carry a gun, I don't do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I'm looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don't carry it because I'm afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn't limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force.

It removes force from the equation...and that's why carrying a gun is a civilized act.

 

 

 

From Canada's The Globe and Mail.

Casey's Dispatch is on a roll this morning, as the link to the below map came in the same Casey's Dispatch as did the What Gold Bubble? chart that appears below.

Click anywhere on the map to link to the story.

 

 

Just another reason to be buying Gold.

 

The following chart links to Casey Research's Casey's Daily Dispatch.

It's free, and would be a good deal at twice the price.

Recommended.

 

 

 

 

First of all, thanks to Mike M. for sending this one in.

Second, when I see a piece like this presented so bitterly, I always wonder what lesson or message the presenter wants to convey.

I'm really angry and disgusted because:

BP is evil?

Oil is evil?

Bush is evil?

Everybody is evil except me?

I'm way too smart to have let something like this happen to me, if the rest of you morons would only do what I tell you to do, this would have never happened?

What?

 

 

So anyway, I went looking around for sites offering third party commentary along with this vid and found beau coup of the above, along with some having to do with the "shakedown" conversation along with "why the hell do we have a legal system anyway?"

Finally I found a little reasoned (at least to my way of thinking) commentary at The Daily Paul.

 

I sent this video to my father who has 20 years experience in the Coast Guard and over 10 years experience as the CEO of an oil spill cooperative in California (firemen who are prepared to clean up spills when they occur).

Here is his response to me:

Thanks for sending the link.

A couple of things are different in this case.

This was the Mexican oil company that controlled and owned the lease, in Mexican waters.

They had about a mile of boom and there are thousands of miles of boom in use today in the gulf.

The dispersants used were basically oil solvents, and very toxic.

Most of the oil was burned or landed on mexican beaches.

The EPA stopped BP from burning the oil.

Big mistake.

The US was requested to help in '79, but were limited to advisery roles only.

The warm waters of the gulf of Mexico result in quick evaporation and degradation of the oil, unlike the cold waters of Alaska

The methods attempted on this spill would have been effective on that spill if they had the technology in use today (robots, submersibles, modern muds and high pressure pumps.)

As far as the harm to fisheries, etc, the currents that rotate in the gulf from the atlantic ocean will disperse and dilute the long term effects.

In addition, the dispersants used will break the oil into very small droplets that degrade quickly and naturally, instead of being concentrated.

The news coverage is exaggerated in that the right wants to bloody OBAMA and the left wants to take over the oil companies.

People in between see it as the tragedy it is and want someone to say everything is going to be okay, but do not trust the Gov or the oil industry to tell them the truth.

Its a mess!

Amen.

 

As for me, I keep flashing back on Shirley Bassey and The Propellerheads.

 

 

 

And speaking of Ron Paul.