One year ago today: April 10, 2015, tinkering away.
Five years ago today: April 10, 2011, I prefer nothing today.
Nine years ago today: April 10, 2007, “Doctor of Sportsology”.
Random years ago today: April 10, 2001, Xmas in April, not Quebec.
MORNING
Another quiet morning scanning the real estate listings in central Florida. The prices are still dropping, but less rapidly. I base a lot on when the property last sold, and plenty of junk picked up in the recession shadow of 2011-2013 is reappearing on the market with double the price tag. Don’t balk, many of these are still relative bargains, provided you have nothing against living in a house build in 1950. I don’t need a place that is going to last forever.
Prevalent again are several new blooms, that is, the sudden appearance of clusters of similar properties for sale in a single area. Plant City, Valrico, Lake Alfred and generally in trailer courts. I wonder if this is a delayed form of the annual spring sell-off. I suppose that many people like myself originally planned to live in Florida in the winter and take off during the brutal summer heat—but only once you live here do you realize the economy right down to the land and police protection of property is geared against that. Do not leave anything of value vacant in Florida for any length of time.
It’s such a joke people trying to sell mobiles without the land for $35,000 in the middle of nowhere. I told you, they are a waste of time, because that [price range] is the crossover price between a cheap house and an expensive trailer. So each fake-out listing, designed to avoid mentioning the land is not included, has to be painstakingly eliminated. I wasted an hour on ten such listings this morning. My kingdom for a site that spells out what is wrong with each property. Here’s an example of my actual database listings I keep, but at this time, it is not open to the public.
There’s more information in the database, but you are not allowed to see it. The thoroughness of my investigations is unmistakable. You will not get this caliber of information perusing the Sunday classifieds. This whole real estate thing has been learned the hard way. I value the above information, although censored, to be around $185. So don’t say I never did anything for you.
The system just slowed to a crawl, indicating the Frenchie is at it again. This means the owner will be here for an argument so I’m going for breakfast at the Senor. Swiss cheese & mushroom omelet, with a crossword puzzle for desert. No sense listening to the Frenchie get his walking papers this time. I had opportunity to check ten properties before he started. Not bad. He’s outta here.
Lava tube.
NOON
Shit-Head Award of the month goes to online Forbes. Here is their message, which proves mainly that Forbes does not possess sufficient intelligence to grasp the concept of ad blockers or why people use them. Furthermore, Forbes sucks for concerning themselves what other people have on their computers. There are millions of successful sites that operate without telling people what to do.
JZ was supposed to call concerning a potential trip to swing past these properties. Nothing (no call) means no-go. Hey, maybe the guy was in church. JZ is a man of strong convictions, mind you quite different than mine. Example, I will not enter a church or even park in front of one unless I am wearing a shirt and tie. JZ on the other hand will show up in a tee and sneakers rather than miss a service.
Food. I stayed in and made shepherd’s pie without a recipe. That’s with ground pork, folks, you know beef is not good for you. I watched some Trump speeches and once again, I would point out some commonalities. I am not stating my position is unique, but that it is rather odd to find someone whose points of view match the exact examples that I use, to the omission of other examples. Who has been the greatest opponent of wasting money on NATO and the UN? Who wants to send other countries the bill for their defense? Who wanted the government out of education? Yep, all in this blog, many times, many years ago.
Okay, whoever is feeding Donald material from this blog, here’s the departments I need you to send packing. Close all “foreign missions” and consulates. You want to replace them with our best people? Go ahead, but let businesses fund it themselves under strict guidelines, not the taxpayer. (One guideline is that 75% of manufacture must be on American soil. No more corporations here with every factory overseas.)
No agency or department of government should be allowed to exist that does not produce a direct and measurable benefit to the majority. Both conditions must be met, reviewed annually. Certainly, those departments that are universally hated should be outright abolished. Starting with the DMV. End all crop subsidies and fire the USDA. All of them.
The rest that have to go? DOJ, EPA, DHS, HHS, CIA/HAS (same thing), IRS/Fed (same thing) and now the ones you rarely hear of. MDA, the missile defense agency. NTIS, national technical information service. DOI, department of the interior. EDA, economic development agency. DOC, department of commerce. Also gotta go are Community Services, Federal Land Management, and enough already, time to cut the Department of Indian Affairs. And end tax cuts for charities and non-profits, they are a sham.
And the USPS, should have been privatized long ago. NASA should have been disbanded after the Challenger disaster in 1986. Don, simply getting rid of this dead weight would save you a trillion per year. Get started on it. What about the displaced workers? (Well, what about them? They know as well as anybody it isn't a real job.) Number one, they are not workers in any sense of the word. They are “employees”. And they have caused so much marketplace distortion over the decades and ruined the lives and jobs of so many people that their collective suffering means nothing to the average taxpayer. Like the rest of us, let them sell their skills where they can, and if they can’t, whose fault is that?
There is one item that, alas, I must specify that I would hate to see go. The high-speed rail. But they could always take the money from the Urban Transit subsidies, which face it, are pretty useless and extravagant. The high-speed rail is a loser, I think, unless it can be designed to carry freight. All these fast trains in the world that carry passengers lose money, you may not have known that. But like a refurbished NASA, if the government is going to bankroll the operation, it should have popular support or, as stated, [at least] some measurable benefit.
NIGHT
It’s a go-ahead. Even if I’m lousy, I’m going to finally put that guitar set together. It’s been on my “incomplete projects” mountain for too long. I figure if bad entertainers and singers are out there, maybe another bad guitar player isn’t such a bad deal. I’ll keep you posted on the progress as long as you don’t expect miracles. I have to immediately learn eight completely new songs. I naturally go for those items that I am familiar with or at least have seen make a crowd effect, doing my best to avoid selections just because I like them. That’s the opposite tack of my competition.
“Country Roads” or “Leaving on a Jet Plane”. Pick one, you are not getting both.
“Tight Fitting Jeans”. That’s my concession to “new country”.
“Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover”. I actually do not much like that song.
“Red Wing”. Yes, the 115 year old classic, because of what happened at the writer’s meeting.
“Honky Tonk Man”. The Dwight version, with weird chord timings, the 7-1/2 bar blues.
“Take This Job & Shove It”. Because one simply must play this song in my venues.
“Wasted Days & Wasted Night”. Providing I can find a key humans can sing it in.
“All My Exes”. No, I have never played that song before.
The stopwatch tells me there are another group of tunes I can’t play because they have distinctive guitar parts, but there is another set of material I can do if I string them together in medleys. Just now that is the only method I have to gloss over guitar instrumental parts. For reasons unknown, very few local musicians play medleys. And guitar heroes never play them, it isn’t congruent with their superstar self-image.
ADDENDUM
If you’ve read this far, take a look at the opening silver market. Is that a spike (see yellow arrow) the instant New York came on-line? Sure looks like it. I would not be surprised if the market does eventually explode over that tiny gap in the daily time line when banks cannot maintain their grip over a weekend. The Pacific time zone gap. I don’t know if the big media follows this, so this may not be news to you. However, I would like nothing better than for real silver to hit $1,000 per ounce. Just for an instant.
I don’t mind talking silver. What I call the “pressure cooker” is often called the “coiled spring effect”. Computer trading allows the banks to overwhelm any price increase by flooding the ether with fake or “phantom” transactions at the price they want. That’s a no-brainer, if thousands of people are paying one price, small investors are not going to pay a higher one.
Remember the JP Morgan scam. When you “buy” silver certificates from a bank, they go spend your money on other things. The philosophy being if anyone wants to redeem their certificates, the bank can buy just enough silver at the going rate to meet that small demand. Note that Canada is the worst for this. Years ago an Aussie called Jon Nadler sold this “fractional metal reserve” scheme to the Royal Bank of Canada, the nation’s premier silver certificate seller.
Actually, Morgan was caught because they were charging investors for storing, transporting, and insuring the non-existent silver. They never denied it, and their defense in court was that it was “standard industry practice”. Standardized by whom?
Now, you can’t just plow silver profits into real estate. That would be ignoring the lessons of 2006, although as always, the numbers will go up. Mind you, if you are into bought-and-paid-for rental property the rents can perpetually be adjusted in your favor. The problem is most people are prone to charging rents based on what they paid for the place. I would not make that mistake, personally.
That vertical spike in pricing (see chart again) is a first for silver in years, even if it is only 10¢ per ounce. As soon as the banks slip even once, the rush is on. All precious metal numbers have been manipulated so long that nobody really knows how much silver is out there. But it is nowhere near the amounts the banks have sold, thusforth it is more than the banks can possibly buy if there is a run. As I’ve said, it will be financial demand that lights the fuse. It will be this flight to real silver that you want.
It would make you richer than all your enemies combined, the second best revenge. Fascinatingly, this makes it a double for me, because the most common element in all “enemies” I’ve ever had in my life is that they are up to their necks in debt. It could well be that they want the world to be angled toward their debt situation and can’t effectively deal with those of us who could care less. So if they ever score a windfall, it disappears into the maw.
Last Laugh
Return Home
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
