Without a polarizing filter, you can’t see the impact of this clothing store’s display. The entire storefront is 344 old sewing machines stacked 8 rows high. I hung out at the mall because I can again afford to. The money exchange booth was open so I asked questions. The law requires ID and a Social Security number for all transactions over $1,000. The information is entered into a database by the currency dealer. I saw the camera so I told the clerk I had “ten thousand ounces of silver buried from when it was $4 an ounce.” I have no intention of doing business there.
Power is something I define as the right to raise prices when total revenues fall. The favored methods are smaller portions and unbundling, but here’s one that really bites. Universities are considering barring students or giving them lower marks unless they can prove they bought a new copy of the course textbook.When all the conversions are done, the most expensive date I ever took a girl out on was at an airport lounge in Vancouver, BC. We both had the beef Wellington and in today’s money, that tab was $251.41.
Spending like that for a date is rare, since I don’t care for women who want such extravagance, or respect men who pay for it as part of the deal. What I’m calculating is today’s maximum amount I should expect to spend on a date with a girl who enjoys the same things I do, since that is the only type of girl I am ultimately compatible with. It may be nothing, but take note that I have never gone on a date on a credit card. Every date in my life I paid cash. Contrast that with the knowledge that since 1999 no country on earth has enough money to pay off all its international debts.
Here’s the receipt for my $11 movie (in the finest print) and nearby a copy of the form you’ll have to fill out to buy cash with cash. Many predict cash will be obsolete in five years but there will always be some form of cash economy. Silver certificates are paper claims to metal that is not yet taken out of the ground. The recent $2 billion Chase fiasco involved silver “futures” and revealed there may be as much as 100 times as many claims on the silver than silver that actually exists. Another necessity of Florida life is air conditioning. The through the wall units, popular because they are more efficient than central, have doubled in price in the past two months. That’s because they are now built overseas where the US dollar is tumbling. A unit to cool a living room will now cost you at least $500 for some off-brand and half again as much for a GE.
A very large order for electronic components is in the works. There is no stock left within driving distance any more, I’ve got it all sitting on my workbench. It was worth the wait, as components that I was building by hand have dropped in price, such as an 8x8 matrix now selling for less than $4.00. The quest for Weller replacement soldering tips has petered out. Those jackasses have made it clear you are to buy a whole new soldering iron each time.
By end of summer, I predict the club will order resistors by the thousand lot, use a 2,200-pin breadboard as standard, and be using store-bought project cases. I’m also watching a new generation of products intended to make startup easier, such as a circuit board that fits in a Altoids tin. Watching, that is, because we don’t know what will become standard.
Here’s the form you need to complete to buy cash for cash. This is a transaction record an must even include the name of the clerk conducting the trade.
Here’s a revealing list. It is based on the number of independent times I opened an application for use during the year. Consider it even more revealing by what is not on the list, such as Facebook, Twitter, or even e-mail. These are standalone apps, no Internet application even made my top ten.Microsoft Word (word processing)
Microsoft Excel (spreadsheet)
Audacity (music editing)
Arduino (Integrated Development Environment)
Microsoft Movie Maker (video editing)
ADDENDUM
The government is heralding quantitative easing as the answer to our economic mess. What is quantitative easing? Nothing new, it is a fancy term for printing more money. They then “inject” this money into the economy by buying back previously issued Treasury bonds (as opposed to new bonds from the Treasury itself). The concept is to bamboozle the public into thinking since they are old bonds, this spending splurge will have no inflationary effect.
The opposite is the truth. Banks will also buy assets using this easy money, resulting in higher prices everywhere. Think about it, there is probably no consumer item that doesn’t cost more than it did a year ago. “Banks” is used here as a collective term that includes investment houses like Goldman Sachs. Here’s a simple explanation of the recent scandal with that outfit.
When the Feds are buying used bonds, Goldman Sachs scrambles to sell them. In the process, they slipped in some shady and non-existent products, which they then tried to recommend as good buys for their clients, creating a veneer of active trading. When this came to light, two billion dollars of the clients money went poof. You might like to know that Warren Buffet was a major shareholder of Goldman Sachs at the time. Do you think he got the money to buy in from selling all his silver?
Now keep things in perspective. The US is still a very wealthy place and unstable currencies like the Euro still like the US dollar. That’s why I like silver. It is unregulated and the most overlooked of value stores in my opinion. Sooner or later those foreigners will want something better than paper dollars, and they will want silver. An often overlooked factor is that people who like American dollars and American silver like them best when those objects are physically located in the United States.
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