If you were to go to USGS you could take a peek at the locations of the 17 earthquakes that happened y’day. But move fast, the list scrolls. The deepest quake was 651 km below Fiji, the shallowest about 500 feet underground in central Alaska. I’m waiting for the tremor reported 500 feet above Congress. I’ve asked for a search filter that gets rid of replies that do such things as display ads, sell books, and demand memberships. I’d like to exterminate another Internet pest: searches that go to forums. Generally, the vast majority of forums are attended by mouth breathers whose typical response is a sentence fragment containing “u” or “kewl”. Ask.com is a congregation of brain-dead slugs posing such timeless gems as, “In what country do they speak Ukrainian?”
Dan Lewis, the daily blogger, does occasionally come up with gems. He tends to borrow rather than create or conclude. Today’s item was the 110 people who won a lottery, which turned out due to “lucky numbers” inside fortune cookies. Interesting, but I would have also reported the harsh way the winners were subjected to unauthorized background checks, invasion of privacy, unconstitutional searches and how they were stigmatized as frauds until declared innocent. Most scary is what might have happened to these people if no cookies had been found. Sieg heil, y’all!
It’s Montana weather time again. Days hot enough to need a room fan; nights chilly enough for a heater. And outside, like the Dakotas, is pleasantly warm only in the sunshine and only on the side facing the sun. Is this an inviting time for scooter trips. The Xmas boom is now the bust with empty streets for the fifth year in a row. I assert the American business model has become so credit-corrupt that it cannot return to sanity. Monex hints that the only AAA currency remaining by 2013 will be gold.
Another DC brainfart headed for disaster is homeowner bailouts of another five billion dollars. The newest angle is the government subsidizing mortgage payments down to “affordable” levels. This stupid policy is institutionalizing the problem. And the problem is greed. There wasn’t one homeowner who did not originally gloat over their easy riches and who did not scoff down those who steered clear. It takes one business cycle (7 years) for bad policy to bite back, and year six begins Sunday.
Both gold and silver dropped to the lowest in a year, carried on my books as a buying opportunity, and yes, there is money set aside for that. It’s an old 1970’s belief, how the very presence of reserves reduces the need for cash. Back then, there was no advantageous amount to be in debt. Colleges were just beginning to teach the ridiculous concept that, statistically, there was a “correct” ratio to be in debt.
I was just finishing my accounting degree back then and I had a laugh over that one. My college professor was a serious guy and he actually believed you could make money by going into debt. He couldn’t fathom that the people who lent money, in the big picture, were never going to let that happen. I concluded back then that what was really happening was that the accounting formulas for profit maximization were becoming skewed by the inclusion of accounts receivable as a liquid asset.
One thing any bookkeeper would notice instantly in my accounts for the past thirty years is that there is no category for liabilities. I have no unpaid bills. But the psychological edge I’m referring to is how people don’t think why one side of the accounting equation includes a separate heading for debt (liabilities), but not the other. The formula should be Assets + Accounts Receivable = Liabilities + Equity, so even the most casual reader would understand that Accounts Receivable is a different animal.
Am I right? Well, the business day after Xmas, Kmart and Sears announced they were closing 125 stores. Their business model is all wrong; you’d think having to lop of an arm would teach them so. My solution is well-known: Prices must drop to where people can pay cash. Warrantees must attach to the product, not the purchaser. Credit reporting agencies must be abolished (not for keeping credit data, but for invasion of privacy). The Greenspans of the world lack the hard bark to just out with it like I do.
