We Americans are such hypocrites. We say loudly that we love our individual privacy, but we would sell it all for fifty cents. With just your name, I can already find out more about you that your mother knows about you! Think about that for a minute. It scares the hell out of me! It’s not optional. Imagine some big fat cop kicks open your…
I’ll never be as smart as my late mother. Many years ago, she told me that everybody in Washington was a crook. (Okay, thanks Mom?) Some years later, I asked her which are worse – Republican crooks or Democratic crooks? She said she preferred Republican crooks, because they dress nicer that Democratic crooks. (Okay, thanks Mom?) A few years before her death, I asked her…
My Democratic friends are confused and annoyed with the President’s low approval rate on the economy. Of course, there are always plenty of other reasons to dislike politicians — in this case, remember our embarrassing withdrawal from Afghanistan or the ongoing fiasco on the Rio Grande? But, he still deserves a pass on the economy. The economic data is mostly very good. Inflation is dropping…
My late mother was a Christmas-oloic. She lived for the holidays and played Christmas music constantly. During high school and college, I worked retail in a shoe store selling ladies shoes. The money was good and the opportunity to meet girls was even better. During that time, the Christmas music was constant. Any fondness or addiction to Christmas music was rooted out and destroyed during…
When I was a young Infantry soldier, I often recalled General Patton’s instructions to all young soldiers. He preached “No dumb bastard ever won a war by going out and dying for his country. He won it by making some other dumb bastard die for his country.” I often wondered if those instructions made young infantry soldiers more trigger-happy . . . maybe too trigger-happy.…
In the final days of World War II, my father found himself passing thru one of the German extermination camps, as part of a team doing an initial check on the risk of fire. There were only a few prisoners/victims remaining in the camp, but they made a huge impression on my father. He never described the horrors he saw, and he wouldn’t tolerate any…
Most everybody supports Freedom of Religion, which protects your right to worship the religion of your choice or none-at-all. That assumes you worship something theological, but you are also free to worship other things, even other people. I suppose you can also worship a tree or a rock? There was one Dutch painter who boasted that he worshiped only beauty, however defined. Of course, under…
Why are things always getting worse? Or, are they? Today, you would find it difficult to convince most Americans today that inflation is no longer a problem. Good luck on that! Going from 9% to only 3% is no reason to celebrate, I guess? Surely, we can celebrate our 5.2% GDP growth rate? Nope? Jobless rates are near record lows, but that’s not good enough…
Growing up on a farm requires a lot of work and a lot of time to do it. There’s no time to play games when there is work to do, so it is not so surprising that my farmboy-father strongly disapproved of games – all games. Games may vary from checkers to football, but they’re all the same, he said . . . a waste…
While Thanksgiving is bad for your waistline, giving thanks is good for the soul. Since I could use some help on that anyway, here are some thanks:
Watching the heartbreaking scenes from Gaza, I remembered Lieutenant William Calley at the My Lai massacre. Although hundreds of civilians were killed in My Lai, Calley was convicted of killing 22 of them, mostly women and children in 1968. Originally sentenced to life imprisonment, that was later commuted by President Nixon to only three years of house arrest. Now 80-years-old, he is living in his…
Christians and other religious followers quibble over which “holiday” is more holy – Easter or Christmas? Veterans quibble over whether Memorial Day or Veterans Day is more significant? (Veterans Day honors everybody who wore a uniform, while Memorial Day honors those who paid the “ultimate price”.) “Thank you for your service” is a polite courtesy, but some of us consider it trite and hollow. When…
Years ago in Dallas, I enjoyed having lunch with Arthur Laffer. Although an economic advisor to President Reagan, he is best known as the father of the Laffer Curve, which showed why a cut in taxes increases revenue to the government. This is the basic principal of Supply-side economics. He had studied the Kennedy Tax Cut, which passed in 1964, and saw how revenues to…
Most people consider interest rates to be boring, but they are wrong! They tell you a great deal about the economy. Here are some “fast facts” about interest rates:
What do mothers do when two kids are fighting? In Virginia Beach, where I live, there is a north-south orientation. The urbanized and developed northern part is separated by a “green line” from the rural, undeveloped southern part. The point is that there is a relatively clear separation. Many pundits argue that the only solution for peace in the Middle East is the two-state solution,…
I attended a birthday party for a relative reaching the age of 100. He was born when postage was only 2 cents and unemployment was only 2.4%, both lower than today. I asked him what was the secret to living so long, and he answered “apples & onions”. Later, I asked a very close friend “how would you like to live to be 100 years…
https://www.wsaz.com/2023/10/17/looking-next-hundred-wwii-veteran-celebrates-100th-birthday-with-friends-family/
When I was born, Arabs and Jews were killing each other in the Mideast.When I graduated from high school, they were still killing each other.When I graduated from college, they were still killing each other.When I was discharged from the Army, they were still killing each other.When I married the first time, they were still killing each other.When I became a father, they were still…
According to the old Buddhist tradition of the “Three Wise Monkeys”, each was named “see no evil, hear no evil, or speak no evil.” According to my late mother, bad things don’t happen if you don’t talk about it. According to the Veterans Administration, every returning veteran needs counseling. According to many existentialists, there is so little difference between life and death that the difference…
Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that the budget for the American Special Forces was being cut. For example, the budget for the Army’s Green Berets was being cut 5-10%. Some years ago, the U.S. and other nations decided that future wars would be drastically different, with more high-visibility open spaces and fewer low-visibility spaces like jungles and door-to-door fighting. High visibility open spaces…
For years, I have cautioned investors not to over-react to recessions, which are a normal, routine part of capitalism. They come and go. A recession is not the same thing as a bear market in stocks, but they often occur together. If you enjoy being afraid, be fearful of a financial crisis instead. They are harder to predict, come on more quickly than recessions, and…
Until July 18th, 2015, I thought former President Donald Trump was just another skirt-chasing New York braggart. That day, I became a “never-Trumper,” because that was the day he trashed American hero John McCain. He didn’t merely disagree with McCain, he trashed him. It was ugly! Later, after McCain died in 2018, Trump ridiculed McCain’s family for having “the world’s longest funeral.” That day, I…
I am comfortable discussing dementia, having seen it so many times in friends and clients over the years. Nonetheless, I attended a two-hour update yesterday. There are currently about 6.8 million Americans with dementia. 89% are cared for by a family member, 66% of whom are women. The five most common types of dementia are (1) Alzheimer’s early or late onset, (2) Vascular Dementia, (3)…
For years, I have cautioned my Democratic friends that the immigration issue was a cancer on the Democratic party, and because my Republican friends belong to the Party of No, there has been no hope of any compromise, at least not since Newt Gingrich was Speaker. Democrats view immigrants as human beings to be cared for, which requires a “comprehensive” solution, including housing, healthcare, education,…
We’ve had at least three “tech summits” where “tech titans” come to Congress and confuse legislators. In last week’s summit, the tech titans asked for better regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) , as sloppy regulation could destroy the tech sector and maybe the country. Sounds innocent enough! The previous tech summit was just a bitch-session, where my Republican friends complained that the mass media was…
On this date for the past twenty-two years, most adult Americans recall the horror of watching commercial airplanes crash into the World Trade Center and the subsequent collapse of those towers, killing almost three thousand people. Personally, I recall cars driving on sidewalks. While my office in Downtown Alexandria was in sight of the Pentagon, I didn’t see the plane crash into it. Of course,…
Since 1687, one of Issac Newton’s “Laws of Motion” has been, loosely speaking — there is an equal but opposite reaction. Maybe, that was also the birth of binary thinking. Longtime readers will recall that my blog posts in late 2015 and 2016 about Donald Trump were not popular with the MAGA crowd. I wrote then and still believe that he is a egocentric egotist,…
It is often joked that economics is like two blind guys trying to describe an elephant. Blind Democrats and Blind Republicans often “see” things differently. The Blind Democrats can see that: (1) GDP growth is better than expected, (2) inflation is falling faster than expected, (3) unemployment remains remarkably low, (4) the stock market, especially tech stocks, is booming. The economy is doing fine! Of…
Just suppose you had a good credit score of 760, but you want to improve it to 800, an excellent score which few people achieve. So, you hire a financial planner, who tells you where to live, who to have dinner with, who your kids should play with, where your spouse should shop, what church you should attend, etc. Expecting to see your credit rise,…
Mitch McConnell is an 81-year-old member of Kentucky aristocracy and has served in the U.S. Senate for 38 years. During live television this week, his face suddenly “froze” for twenty seconds. I’ve seen that look before. It was on my late mothers face, when she had a mini-stroke. (Nobody should not be ridiculed — paging Fox’s Greg Gutfeld!) I was hopeful that the Republican leader…
Is it fair to punish good and decent people who cause great problems? How about good and decent companies who cause great problems? Social media is a pleasant to spend time, while their associated algorithms manipulate the vulnerable. It is 90% good and 10% bad. Of course, all the social media inventors were focused on the 90%. Last week, the President met with large companies…
Harry Markowitz was born in Chicago in 1927 and studied under the legendary economist, Milton Friedman, at the University of Chicago. Much later, Markowitz was awarded the Nobel prize for developing Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT). Traditional investing requires memorizing minute details of stocks and comparing them. In fact, there are about 14 thousand stocks with millions of data points, which is enough to choke the…
Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson famously sang “Mama, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys”. That’s good advice, Mamas . . . but don’t let them grow up to be economists either! If you do, your kids will spend their lives learning obscure economic theories and studying endless economic data, that politicians & voters ignore! Invariably, the political party controlling the White House…