Fast Times On the Jersey Shore?

My wife and I enjoyed a beautiful getaway weekend last week. First we journeyed down to Long Island for the annual John Charos/Patty Costello Belmont bash. On Sunday afternoon we headed to Spring Lake NJ for the evening. While I was living in Hoboken in the '90's Spring Lake was one of my favorite summer spots. It's the opposite of what most people think of when they think Jersey Shore. Spring Lake is elegant, classy, clean and if you can afford it, a great place to bring your family.

If what I witnessed on our drive down the main drag of Ocean Ave is any indication, we have much more pain to go on the real estate front and the economy in general. Ocean Ave is the main street in Spring Lake, running directly parallel to and right next to the beach. It's the home of a couple beautiful hotels and homes as you can see pictured above. ( The house in the picture is on the market for $4.9 million).What was stunning to me was the number of homes for sale within the mile to mile and a half drive. Let's face it, your not going to be putting up an ocean front piece of property for sale in this environment, unless you absolutely have to. Evidently there are a number of people that must have to. There must have been 10-15 houses for sale---just on Ocean Ave. I sense blood in the water. When you combine that with stories out of the Hamptons like this one in Vanity Fair, it's obvious that the well to do are in for some pain. Remember the trickle down theory espoused by the Reagan crowd in the early '80's? Cut taxes at the top of the income scale and wealth will trickle down to the masses---I have a feeling economic pain will trickle down at a much greater rate to Joe 6 pack as this all plays out.

If you do visit the Jersey Shore this summer and you like seafood, make sure to stop at Spikes in Point Pleasant. Spikes is a BYOB, hole in the wall, with no atmosphere, no reservations but fabulous fresh fish. Check it out! If Spikes is too crowded then head over to Red's Lobster Pot

The End Of US $ Hegemony?

While we all busy with BBQ's over this beautiful Memorial Day Weekend there is a huge story that is not getting any of our collective attention that deserves mention . Only time will tell where this goes and this Bloomberg story contends that any talk of Brazil and China abandoning the US$ as invoice currency is "idle-talk".

Let' see how this develops. If these two countries were to move in the direction of replacing the US$ it would have profound implications for America. I'll leave it to gold-guru Jim Sinclair to explain : ( in this case he is quoting Alf Field's analysis)

Dear CIGAs,
I bring to you the following with the specific permission of Alf Fields.
I have suggested to you often in the past that once the price of gold reaches into its maximum potential it will not repeat the fall of the 1980s.
I foresee gold re-entering the system in a new and unique form that does not include convertibility. It will not be tied to interest rates as it once was in its previous form.
I have written to you various times about the Federal Reserve Gold Certificate ratio, modernized and revitalized, which now may well be associated with an SDR form of an International Central Bank. The tie between the ratio and gold would be a measure of international liquidity considered zero or 100 on the day of adoption.

The following is Alf’s statement yesterday, with his permission to post:

“Gold cannot decline from its highs as it will be incorporated into the national and international monetary systems at that time.” –Alf Fields, May 20, 2009

Now do you have any questions why Fund Wizard Paulson just got long a few billion dollars worth of Gold ETFs and a few major gold producers?
Finally a major event has taken place that is a US dollar milestone.
The financing and extremely important event is the arrangement between China and Brazil displaces the dollar as China becomes the major trading partner with Brazil. Since then the Rial has been celebrating and the dollar has been depressed.
This is a once in approximately a century replacement of a trading currency that has always meant a dethronement of the deposed and coronation of a new currency king.
The last time this happened was when the US dollar supplanted the British Pound as the major trading currency and entity with Brazil 79 years ago.
It took the Brits 300 years to supplant the Portuguese Escudo with the British Pound.
Only twice has this occurred in 379 years. This is obscure to most but not to Mr. Paulson the hedge wizard. Obscure to most, but not to our gang at JSMineset.
The dollar died in Rio and that means everywhere.\
The dollar is in for a very cold winter.
There is one thing that is absolutely certain and that is Gold is now headed to at least $1650 and in all probability much higher. This is happening NOW!
What more do you need to know?

Thou shalt not covet !

Again I have to give a tip of the hat to my friend Bruce Bergwall. He's helped motivate me to try to stay true to a year long biblical reading project---so far it's all systems go and we are on schedule through 5 and a half months. This particular reading program has us skipping around in a 7 day cycle. For example one day we read the prophets, another history, another the Gospel etc. What sparked this post was the fact that recently the assigned reading included the 10 Commandments story from the Book of Exodus. Exodus 20 to be exact. The Commandment that really made me pause was the very last one:( Exodus 20:17)



17Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's





Biblical language is interesting in that even though we know the gist of what is being spoken, many times the words used in the translation don't jive with common usage. We rarely ever use the term covet. I decided to look it up. Here's Merriam-Webster:



Main Entry:
cov·et
Pronunciation:
\ˈkə-vət\
Function:
verb
Etymology:
Middle English coveiten, from Anglo-French coveiter, from Vulgar Latin *cupidietare, from Latin cupiditat-, cupiditas desire, from cupidus desirous, from cupere to desire
Date:
14th century



transitive verb 1 : to wish for earnestly 2 : to desire (what belongs to another) inordinately or culpably intransitive verb : to feel inordinate desire for what belongs to another



So the 10th Commandment is telling us to essentially not desire any material good that belongs to our neighbors. That sure puts a lid on the "keeping up with the Jones's" philosophy that has been such a central tenant in American life the past 50 years or so.



I find it a little funny that given all the difficult issues we face as a society we still read from time to time about efforts to post the 10 Commandments in various government buildings, schools etc. The reason i find it funny is that the way I read Exodus 20:17, our entire consumer society is based on coveting whatever is thy neighbor's. That's what keeps us going as American consumers,



Why are we so intent on trying to shove the Commandments down peoples throats? What's the point? Unless we are all ready to acknowledge how far short of the mark we all fall it seems to me to be an exercise in hypocrisy.



I'll use Matthew Chapter 7 to illustrate my point:





1Judge not, that ye be not judged.
2For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
3And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
4Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
5Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.



Instead of worrying about whether we can post the Commandments in front of society's collective face, maybe we should worry about the "beam in our own eyes" and work on fixing that. If we do that we will taken a small step towards a better society.

Timmy G

I was driving around yesterday early afternoon and happened to listen to a radio rebroadcast of Meet The Press. The guest was our esteemed Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. One good thing about MTP is that the guests do get to answer questions without constant interruption. One frustrating aspect is that we have to rely on the good sense of the moderator to ask follow up questions. In this particular case David Gregory wasn't up for the job.

As I listened I heard Geithner defend his and the Obama Administration's approach to "solving" our economic crisis and their efforts to get the "economy going again". Just once I wish Gregory would have asked what was meant by getting the economy going. I've said this many times and I'll say it again. What passed for economic growth from late 2001 to 2006 was a debt driven mirage. That's why I would have liked to have heard Geithner have to explain his thought process a little more. The housing gold rush and the subsequent refi deluge were the forces behind the consumer society that was America circa 2005, 2006 and 2007. The thing is, even with all of that debt driven consumption all we ended up doing was spending borrowed dollars on stuff manufactured elsewhere ( for the most part). Even if we are able to revive the consumer over the next quarter or two what would the consumer spend on and how would it benefit American manufacturers even if this spending came to fruition? The fact that the average American has seen his housing stock decline precipitously and at the same time has seen his retirement portfolio decline anywhere from 30-60% over the past year is a double whammy I don't think there will be any short-term recovery from.

Talk of "getting the economy going again " is absurd at this point with massive stimulus and more debt is absurd.Maybe Tim G and his boss mean well but as far as I can see the only beneficiaries of all this will be the bankers at Goldman and Morgan as well as the other vermin who feed off of Washington pork.

Wounded Knee

Speaking of the NPR segment, The Writer's Almanac, the December 29 edition caught my attention and I intended to post it a couple weeks ago but never got around to. It was the story of the massacre at Wounded Knee. I knew next to nothing about this sad episode in American History, but after reading this blurb I think I need to learn more:

The Writer's Almanac--December 29, 2008

Today is the anniversary of the massacre at Wounded Knee, which took place in South Dakota in 1890. Twenty-two years earlier, the local tribes had signed a treaty with the United States government that guaranteed them the rights to the land around the Black Hills, which was sacred land.
But in the 1870s, gold was discovered in the Black Hills, and the treaty was broken. People from the Sioux tribe were forced onto a reservation, with a promise of more food and supplies, which never came. Then in 1889, a prophet named Wovoka, from the Paiute tribe in Nevada, had a vision of a ceremony that would renew the earth, return the buffalo, and cause the white men to disappear. This ceremony was called the Ghost Dance. The Ghost Dance scared the white Indian Agents, and they moved in to arrest Chief Sitting Bull, who was killed in the attempt.
The next leader they focused on was Sitting Bull's half-brother, Chief Big Foot. He was leading his people to the Pine Ridge reservation, seeking safety there. But it was winter, 40 degrees below zero, and he contracted pneumonia.
Big Foot was sick, he was flying a white flag, and he was one of the leaders who had actually renounced the Ghost Dance. But the Army didn't make distinctions. They intercepted Big Foot's band and ordered them into the camp on the banks of the Wounded Knee Creek.
The next morning, federal soldiers began confiscating their weapons, and a scuffle broke out between a soldier and an Indian. The federal soldiers opened fire, killing almost 300 men, women, and children, including Big Foot.
One of the survivors was the famous medicine man Black Elk, who told his story to John Neihardt in Black Elk Speaks (1932).

Happiness

Many mornings on my drive in to work I catch a 3-4 minute segment on NPR called The Writer's Almanac. The piece is narrated by Garrison Keillor and is an overview of daily birthdays and events of importance to the literary world. Today's piece was a thought provoker. It ends up that today is the birthday of a novelist named Julian Barnes. I'd never heard of him. Keillor usually provides a three or four sentence snapshot of the artist along with a quote. Here's what Julian Barnes had to say:

"The secret of happiness is to be happy already."

GENESIS-- 2009

I'm not one for New Year's resolutions. Too often our best intentions are dashed by our weaknesses. I do like to establish new disciplines around calendar milestones--- birthdays, Labor Day, New Years etc. By new disciplines I mean things like new routines, new workouts, reading regiments or new work campaigns. I have to thank my colleague and friend Bruce Bergwall for the inspiration to start a new regime at the beginning of '08. It was a daily Bible reading regiment, the intent being to read the entire Bible over the course of the year. The adage that " the road to hell is paved with good intentions" was applicable in this case as the discipline stalled out a month or two in. As I approached the end of December, I thought that that effort might be worthwhile to revive. One of the problems last year is that we got a little bit of a late start --thus we were trying to play catch-up right from the start. The other problem was human weakness.

That's one of the reasons I like to try to periodically implement these new routines. Even recognizing slothful tendencies you never know what is going to stick and when a seed will sprout. This year I've even try to get an early start on the Bible reading. We'll see what happens.

The really interesting thing is that there always seems to be a new discovery even in the most familiar reading . Take the story in Genesis where Adam and Eve have just been reprimanded by God for disobedience in the Garden of Eden. Check out these verses: ( Genesis 3: 17-20)

17 And to Adam he said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, 'You shall not eat of it,' cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; 18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. 19 In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return." 20 The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.

Verses 19 and 20 seem incongruent. In verse 19 Adam is being told he will return to dust and right in the very next line, verse 20 we have a complete change of pace. I'm certainly not a Biblical scholar but doesn't it seem here like a patchwork of stories and with this particular verse we are transitioning to another voice or author.