Entries tagged with economy

Entry tags:

charity,
economy

Amazon Smile shuts down

Not many people knew of it, but anything you could buy at Amazon.com could also be bought at Smile.Amazon.com, with a portion of the sale money being donated to the charity you selected. At work, I always tried to direct products to that url when people asked me for tech items. Well, I just saw the email from Amazon that they are shutting down this charity service. Why it was a separate service instead of baked-in to the main corporate webpage, I don't know.

Media this morning report that people are surprised, like me.

The news has been met with a mix of disbelief, anger, and confusion from charities and consumers. For example, the SquirrelWoord Enquine Sanctuary tweeted a copy of the announcement along with the comment "What???? Seriously @amazon." One reply points out that AmazonSmile was a way to support small charities who are "innovative and creative," while another says they made purchases through Amazon because of the donation and that will not be the case in the future. https://www.pcmag.com/news/amazon-is-closing-down-amazonsmile-on-feb-20

The slow collapse continues, I guess. Exponential-growth capitalism must be fed at all costs. (Or such is the inevitability, we're sternly told. ("The beginning is near."))

Entry tags:

Moody Monday: yep, it's a mood

I'm not in the best mood today. Let's blame it partially on the monkeypox vaccine 2nd dose and feeling "not my best" again, like last time. I'm checking out of civilization for the rest of today, I think. Sit under an electric blanket and read and eat and otherwise just be a bum.

On my trip to Aldi's grocery today, the hot sauce section of the shelf was empty. *sigh* First time I've ever seen that, I think. But they had eggs this time.
Someone famous has commented on the skyrocketing price of lettuce. Raw food is expensive now, and prepared food is outrageously expensive.
Home Depot's co-founder is on my naughty list again after blaming socialism for making people not want to work. At wages that won't pay rent and barely buys food, while corporate profits soar, maybe has something to do with it? Bring on the socialism, please.
The IRS audited poor taxpayers in 2022 while ignoring rich ones. *grrrrr*
USA police set a new record in 2022 for killing our own citizens, since records began in 2013.
Minneapolis police seized 31 guns after what started as a traffic stop. In 2022, they removed about 1,100 guns from city streets. That's some useful progress, I guess.
My Jordan neighborhood ranks only 7th in areas of Minneapolis measured by violent crimes per capita. For once, I also have data that says other areas are worse than Minneapolis. Search this blog for "The worst contiguous", and see the chart that places a Minneapolis area (not even mine) as 3rd of the worst so far analyzed.

So... bad mood. It's bad here, but there are worse places to be. I want to see a comparison of wealth inequality now in 2023 with that of other periods of world history when the peasants killed their economic overlords in desperation and outrage. It was bad before, and I'm sure it's worse now.

I'm tired of human civilization. The status quo is awful. I want to start over with new rules.

Entry tags:

low expectations for 2023

I have a few thoughts on today's holiday. I've done it once before, telling people to expect bad things from a calendar year. I'm doing it again now for 2023.

See empty grocery shelves and read the forecast...

Food: Last week, I went grocery shopping again, and prices are still high. The egg shortage has more to do with an epidemic (chickens, non-COVID) than the usual supply chain problems that keep other shelves low on stock. The store shelves were entirely or almost empty of egg cartons at both Aldi's and Cub Foods. People are going online to try to find affordable eggs in Minneapolis. I bought my usual cage-free eggs at Cub, but they cost 0.8 hours of US minimum wage for a dozen eggs. Expect it to grow increasingly difficult to afford the calories to feed your body while you work to afford more calories. Forget about reserving any money for rent. (Shelter is a luxury in Amurrika. The police returned to evict that homeless camp. Merry Christmas, from Mayor Frey. Still no word yet if my pictures helped that lawyer get information from the city, at long last.) I blame capitalism for my low expectations on this topic. I don't think government lip service will help this cost inflation problem.

Climate: It is unusual for our climate to experience a "triple dip" of 3 consecutive La Niña years. When it finally ends in a few weeks/months, expect El Niño to just be hot. Expect more trouble with water supply and crop production.

Pandemic: I predicted that 2022 would be the year when the world finally realizes what's at stake with this pandemic. I was wrong about that realization. I wasn't wrong about what's at stake. More data arrived that infection is permanent. It's still not the ideal study to prove my point, but it's just one more piece of evidence in a continuing trend with the same conclusion. SARS-CoV-2 infection is permanent, like chickenpox. As with Hepatitis C, we should just assume that people who got infected are still infected, unless we find some compelling evidence that a particular individual escaped that fate through luck... or nasal neutralizing vaccines, maybe. The problem with this particular permanent infection is that it's much less benign. It damages the immune system (like HIV in several details, including recently reported dendritic cell damage, plus something new about CD14+ white blood cells) and causes blood clots throughout the body. I still expect global mortality to rise significantly over time. It is not doing so at the moment. In the USA and elsewhere, excess mortality appears to be stabilizing. That's against my prediction. But HIV takes about 10 years to progress to AIDS, so I may have to wait a long time for society to reach my level of worry. We know the damage is happening, but it's not killing people en masse yet, so "nobody cares".

Sure, it's hard to stay realistic in tough times without becoming cynical. I'll try to keep the bad news to Moody Mondays, and I'll try to bring more good news to my posts on other days. I still hold great hope for humanity's future and the Earth's. Good luck to everyone with surviving until that good future unfolds.

Entry tags:

the pandemic churn at Meetup

Over the years, I've been the online leader for 2 different groups at Meetup.com. It's a great place to organize calendars of activity, and it's free to use for attendees. They charge meeting organizers for the service, but it's way too expensive for what it costs Meetup to provide that service. They charged US$150/year for each group, the last I knew a year ago. That's too rich for my blood, so I eventually stopped paying both of them.

Twin Cities Powershell Automation User Group is looking for a new leader, but it may not get one. It'd be a shame to lose it. I created that group back in 2014 October 14. (I got the date from the earliest copy at the wayback machine.) The powershell group had previously used EventBrite for RSVPs, but it wasn't reaching a large audience. Attendance definitely improved after switching to Meetup. I paid for that group for several years, before handing off the finances of it to Tim Curwick, the group president at the time. I hope it finds a new leader, but it seems unlikely. This group focuses on in-person meetings (with pizza!) rather than online meetings, which are available everywhere. There are probably more people like me who simply don't attend group events any more due to health risks.

Star Citizens of Minnesota found someone else to take over, which is good. I paid the bills for a few years, which is too much money gone. But I still haven't attended any of their indoor events since the pandemic started. This group is based on the Star Citizen game which has been in development since 2012, and still isn't in release yet, although some functions are playable (if you're on Windows).

I received the notice today that Twin Cities EcoClub is also looking for a new leader. I attended only one of their events. We listened to the person organizing the hydroponics container at the North Market grocery. (Aside: I know I edited photos of that event. Did I really never post it? I certainly can't find it now in Dreamwidth searches.) I remember that one was post-pandemic, because we stayed in a large spaced-apart circle outdoors to listen.

I know I've seen notices of other groups losing their leadership. Meetup will eventually delete the groups if nobody else steps up to pay the bills. It's sad to see the groups disappear, but maybe Meetup will finally stop "printing money" and reduce their rates (by a lot) to something more reasonable.

Entry tags:

Moody Monday: economy edition

poster "You chould be more upset about insulin prices than gas prices"

As an appropriate sign of the times, a news story about people now unable to afford shopping at Walmart is paywalled behind a news site that costs $415/year. I didn't subscribe. People can't afford such costs. I'm doing better at this moment, but I've been there. I expect that Biden won't help.

In the continuing hypocrisy of privatizing the profits but socializing the costs, the fossil fuel industry got $5.9 trillion in subsidies globally in 2020. The pharmaceutical industry continues to overcharge on products we paid them to develop. Considering how well it works for the gun lobby to pay politicians to create market demand for their product, what does it mean to pandemic healthcare policy? Turn everyone into a pharmaceutical consumer thanks to persistent infection and long term disability? Good plan.

In the continuing greed-is-good tragedy, 60 Minutes broadcast a story about essential life-supporting products being intentionally kept in short supply to prop up their prices. Seriously. Mother Jones created a whole series of reporting on how USA wealth is being looted by vulture capitalism. You can scroll down and just read the titles to learn how bad it is.

In the continuing growth-until-collapse cycle, wealth consolidation by the already wealthy keeps rising in low income neighborhoods even though mass theft and infrastructure cannibalization continues. Nobody at the helm is paying attention. Or worse, they're making the wrong decisions. And that's without even mentioning gas prices.

If you have the hours to spare, I recommend watching the entire Wealth & Poverty playlist of the class lectures of professor Robert Reich. If you have less time, then I recommend the single lecture, "The Future of Inequality (& You?)." I've embedded it below. Separately, I also recommend his short video, "This One Thing Is Making Your Life More Expensive".

Watch on YouTube

I've been advocating for a different kind of economy for a long time, at least since Occupy, and I vote that way too. You know how I feel about worshiping wealth. I want a new way forward.

Now, time to go outside and do a bit of gardening.

Entry tags:

supporting journalism

The truth is a casualty in tough times. I thought I might subscribe to a newspaper, but both local outlets are more expensive than I realized ($200 for Star Tribune and $150 for Pioneer Press), even for online-only subscriptions.

For money like that, I'd rather have access to the USA website where I most often read news articles, the Washington Post. They're within that critical "Most Reliable" section of news trustworthiness. Their left-center rating also suits my typical reading habits. Everybody reviews their sources of news for fact-based reporting, right? Anyway, I lucked out, and they had a special for only $39 instead of $100 for a digital-only subscription. Why is local news so much more expensive? Is it just a matter of scale, so that fewer subscribers means higher cost per subscriber?

In addition, I spent some more of my COVID relief check by donating to local news outlets, MinnPost and North News. I would've donated to Insight News too, but I couldn't figure out how. Still, though, I hope I helped my neighborhood at least a little bit by supporting local journalism.

I know, having enough spare money to contribute any amount to journalism is disgustingly elitist these days. How did we get so bad off that me earning $37K/year puts me better off than 33% of Americans (even before 2020 happened, now is it 50%, or even higher)? Something has gone very, very wrong.

I also want to know how the problem houses on this block always have cars and trucks outside that are so much nicer than my rust bucket? Oh, yeah, it's probably because they're operating tax-free businesses like all the best companies do.

Entry tags:

it's expensive being poor

While my car has been parked at my house this year, it has been rear-ended by a drunk driver, nearly-scraped by a doped up driver (who destroyed other cars on the block and a fire hydrant which took months for the city to finally repair), and had the driver side door messed up by someone trying to break into it.

bullet holes in my car last night 2016 Nov 13

Now I can add bullet holes to the list.

When the first few bullets were fired around 10:10pm, they sounded like they were practically in front of my house. I was sitting by the front window, so I dove for the floor and started dialing 911. Then the second round of bullets were fired, and I realized that the sofa probably wasn't much of a barrier. I ran upstairs to sit in the bathtub to finish dialing 911.

After confirming that police were on the way, I went outside to start looking around. It's pitch black here. We do have street lights on our block, but they are dim and nowhere close to my house. As police headlights brightened up the area, we discovered that 3 cars had been hit by bullets, including mine.

I gave them permission to get into my car and door to try to retrieve the bullets. They waited for a crime unit to come out and do the work. They finished around 1am. I discovered today in sunlight that what was left of my badly-functioning door was now completely dismantled by police and practically unusable. I went to my usual mechanic today to see what could be done, but it pretty much needs just replacing completely, which will cost several hundred dollars. I only have the minimal liability insurance required to drive legally, so that's no help for the damage that other people do.

I've got it scheduled for Friday. I considered just painting my usual hashtag #WarzoneInMinneapolis onto the door with the bullet holes left alone. There are plenty of kids on this block, though, and I figure it's best not to add to the background noise of their impression of "normality" in the Jordan neighborhood of Minneapolis. So I'll get at least one of them repaired.

I was woken up again around 5am this morning by more gunshots, but they were much farther away, so I just went back to sleep eventually.

I woke up after 10am and eventually went out to survey the car. I talked to another neighbor about the incident. He was a black guy a few years younger than me. He mentioned that he'd been shot recently by a paint ball gun by someone driving in a car, and he still had a bruise from it. Yuck.

When this car is no longer usable, I'm sure I'll rely solely on public transportation from now on. I figure we're only a decade away from self-driving car services that make private ownership just a luxury. I might as well join the trend early. We already have several people at work who always use bicycle or public transport, so I'll be in good company.

For now, though... I'm annoyed by sudden expenses that rich people don't have thrust upon them by strangers during the night. At least no windows were broken in the car or house. I think we have another citizen patrol scheduled this week. I'll be there.

Entry tags:

the collapse continues

Okay, one more depressing post, and then I'll try to get back to talking about happy bunnies and dancing unicorns.

I've read elsewhere that Soviets observed the illegal cannibalization of infrastructure as they reached the breaking point of their failed economy. During the last two years, I have kept my eyes open for signs of such activity here in America. I find plenty of it, but it's still not quite enough to reach popular attention yet. All it'll take is one big power outage in a major city for everyone to finally notice.

Here in Minnesota, thieves are stealing manhole covers and sewer grates from the streets, copper from vacant buildings, and copper wiring from park lamp posts. Around the country, similar things are happening. Thieves are taking copper wiring from parks, copper plumbing from business properties, copper wiring from live transformers, copper tubing from air conditioners, and they've even caused a power outage in a small Ohio town by taking down an electrical substation.

It's becoming a big problem. The New York Times did an article back in February. They mention that there's even a national coalition that's formed to help bring awareness and promote legislation to slow this black market activity. USA Today did their own article in April on the theft of catalytic converters.

The economic spiral continues downward. At the national level, Republicans and Obama together are still bent on reducing government employment. I said two years ago and still maintain that we need huge national government projects that put massive numbers of people to work.

In the United States during the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration provided paid jobs for millions of unemployed men and women (as well as youth in a separate division, the National Youth Administration).
Incredibly, during the current Great Depression, government employment has been shrinking (aside from temporary census hiring last year).
- http://rwer.wordpress.com/2011/07/12/the-incredible-shrinking-state/

It annoys me that the national government continues to do things that I think are unhelpful and/or idiotic. It seems so obvious to me what needs to happen. Exactly the opposite of Republican strategy, I think that big wages need to end so that big employment can happen. Tax the living daylights out of the rich and use that money (yes, redistribute the wealth!) to pay for huge public projects that give spending money back to the population and renews their job skills so they remain employable after the projects eventually end. Much better than simply extending unemployment benefits, I think.

Entry tags:

economy,
politics

the cost of no government

It's finally happened. Minnesota is "shutting down" its government. A judge has ruled on what services are deemed "essential" for the safety of the population or necessary to meet federal obligations, and those will remain functioning. The effect will be the furlough of 2/3 of state government employees, the largest layoff in state history. I think my list of the essentials would have been slightly shorter, but hers includes:

judicial courts
most of the state's prison system, state patrol
driver license renewal, vehicle license plate renewal
buses and rail lines (I would have closed them as being huge conveniences but inessential to state government)
emergency maintenance of roads and bridges
K-12 education, and state colleges and universities (I would have closed all of them)
benefits payments for medical assistance, MN Care (that affects me directly, presidential-hopeful Pawlenty intended to cut it)
welfare, child support, refugee assistance
veterans homes
unemployment benefits

Services that will be shut down:

benefits for childcare assistance, criminal background checks, food shelf distribution
regular maintenance of roads and bridges (this change affects my commute across various bridges over the Mississippi River)
new driver license testing services
highway rest stops
minnesota historical society sites
minnesota zoo (except as needed to keep animals safe and secure from escape)
state parks
hunting and fishing licensing
race tracks and state lottery
some legislative staff (apparently, though I can't find specifics on who)
any new payments to city or county governments

I already got my letter from Minnesota Care warning me that if I had trouble getting any service, I should just go to a hospital emergency room. *sigh* Some non-profit agencies are going to suffer tremendously for lack of support from state government. Luckily, I work someplace that receives no money from government except (I think) for a few city contracts to provide their animal control shelter service.

I happen to like living in a society that includes almost every service that Minnesota state government provides. Exactly which of these services are frivolous? I presume that the race tracks and lottery are meant as revenue generators rather than mere entertainment. Which service exactly is the one that Republicans are offended at supporting? That's what I don't understand. For the most part, I like this government. How do we benefit by refusing to fund it? I think it could certainly be simplified (especially the tax process) but not eliminated.

Suppose a government needed to acquire 20% of all money circulating in its economy to keep its civilization content. If you can't collect any more money from the poor ("squeeze blood from a turnip" is a phrase that comes to mind) then you have to tax the rich since they have the majority of the money anyway. Republicans seem hellbent on protecting the rich on both the national and state levels, however, so now we get to see what it's like to do without much of the government. They couldn't legislate their way to smaller government, so I guess they intend to starve it instead. They're having much more success with that method.

We've turned off the infrastructure repair in Minnesota today. What happens when we shut off education and prison too? Why can't we tax the rich to keep all this stuff functioning?

It's a http://www.shutdownshame.org/main/, indeed.

Entry tags:

economy

decline to equilibrium

I still say that there needs to be zero growth in the economy, zero growth in population, and zero growth in energy consumption. After, of course, a significant decline to get everything to a sustainable level. Decline is painful. Steep decline is even worse.

Here is a photograph of a neighborhood home (about 4 houses away) that I took last year around 2010 August 18.

And here's the photograph I took of the same house today.

I guess that desperation to work and do any job is insufficient to overcome these economic doldrums. Very sad.

Next month should show us if things are holding steady at "bad" or if they're about to get even worse.

"They're saying there are more jobs. I'm just wondering where those jobs are," Lambrecht said.

About 6.2 million Americans, 45.1 percent of all unemployed workers in this country, have been jobless for more than six months - a higher percentage than during the Great Depression.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/06/05/eveningnews/main20069136.shtml#ixzz1P0kKYn00

Rough times. So far, I don't regret cutting expenses by living without an automobile for the summer.

Entry tags:

corporate behavior and customer accountability

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Entry tags:

the end of american empire

China buys West Texas oil field formation

Guess who just today cut off America's supply of rare earth metals? China. Guess who's buying rights to oil fields in Texas? China. Guess who's the number 1 consumer of world energy? China. Guess who owns more dollars than any other nation? China.

I introduce to you the new world superpower: China.

America has lived by an odd philosophy for many years, wondering why God put our resources under other people's soil. Now we'll get to see what it feels like, as a more powerful nation begins eying us for the sole purpose of figuring out how they can exploit us to sate their own desires.

I wrote my final paper in geology class a few years ago (college: the second attempt) in part on China's plans to mine the surface of the moon for tritium to feed its nuclear fusion plants. They're far behind schedule, but at least they have a perfectly logical utility to their space ventures. America doesn't.

I've warned about it repeatedly, but hopefully our nation will finally get serious about the state of our material resources (which are depleting rapidly). Maybe now we can have a real space program, please?

Liberals are prepared to understand the inevitable future in a way that conservatives will entirely fail to grasp. Our future be constrained (finally) by resource limitations which are good for the environment, as Green folk have been warning for decades. Our future will be multicultural (finally) with a pseudo-communist nation leading the planet. Our future will be dominated (finally) by a nation that doesn't spend an absurd percentage of its gdp on its planet-wide military complex. Why bother, when the natives willingly sacrifice their future to the god of exponential money supply growth via legally enforceable bank contracts?

I, for one, welcome our new Chinese overlords. Ni hao. (Free Tibet!)

Entry tags:

economy,
psychology

keeping out the giraffes

TED is such a wonderful institution. The presentations that they host and the videos that they publish are both great additions for teaching and conversation.

Today's video is by economist Tim Jackson. He adds human psychology back into the economic equation. The elimination of "rational agents" from economic theory is a cornerstone of the "post-autistic economics" movement. It's good to see other economists joining the effort, although they probably wouldn't know it by that name. Maybe eventually we'll stop worrying about those giraffes.

http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_jackson_s_economic_reality_check.html (direct link to this embedded video)

Now, excuse me while I shutdown my pc to remove my RAID 1 array. I plan to eliminate the duplicate hard drive energy consumption and wear-and-tear. I think perhaps I can learn to live without the convenience of Windows' restore from sleep mode.

Here in Minnesota, we have giraffes at the Minnesota Zoo only during the warm months. During the winter, we haul them to warmer climates in special giraffe trucks. We're safe from giraffes during the cold season. I guess I can spend my time thinking about something else... like impossible hamsters.

Entry tags:

best government tool. ever.

Technology is great. The user interface still needs a lot of improvement, but this is exactly the kind of tool that can help promote democratic discussion! Individuals now have the power to experiment with government budgeting.

This website offers a tool to help people see just how difficult (or easy) it is to balance the Minnesota state budget. Tweaking taxes upward (not even a lot) solves the deficit very quickly. Cutting expenditures requires some really awful choices when you see how all of the costs are divided between various programs.

http://www.mymnbudget.com/

How do the various candidates stack up, when you get to play with the numbers yourself? They only link to PDF documents instead of providing a template with the user interface widgets already adjusted for you, but at least it's a start! As this local newspaper article mentions: "[The Democratic candidate] boasts, not unjustly, that he has been "far more explicit than other candidates about what I intend to do." "

The Republican mantra ("Cut taxes! Cut spending!") looks pretty awful when you watch just which programs have to get axed, rather than blaming some nebulous and nefarious "gummint". Only one of the Big Three candidates has no explicit budget proposal on the site: the Republican candidate.

I happen to dislike both the Democratic and Republican candidates, so I am looking to give my vote to a minor party instead. This tool, however, is awesome for comparing the various political platforms on one important issue.

Entry tags:

economy

economic non-recovery (an update)

I've stated before that the methods used to calculate the health of our economy are incorrect. They favor corporate profiteering but ignore personal hardship. Economies exist because people need them; it should be its effect upon people by which we measure the health of any economy.

A recent article by the post-autistic economics crowd sums it up nicely, although I would edit their title to become "Obama's profitable non-recovery". The chart to the right explains the situation rather well. If you use metrics of corporations, things are looking up already. If you use metrics of personal hardship, however, a very different picture emerges.

( Cut to avoid being too image-heavy... )

I keep saying that we need a zero-growth financial system. We need a zero-growth society to go with it.

Entry tags:

economy

greenback fades into the new economic reality

I already told you about oil producing countries in the middle east attempting to create their own non-exponential currency (based on gold) for valuing their oil instead of using U.S. dollars.

Last week (June 29th), the United Nations began encouraging countries worldwide to choose some other currency (besides the U.S. dollar) as their reserve currency. They've said it before, but they seem serious this time.

Scrap dollar as sole reserve currency: U.N. report

A new United Nations report released on Tuesday calls for abandoning the U.S. dollar as the main global reserve currency, saying it has been unable to safeguard value. But several European officials attending a high-level meeting of the U.N. Economic and Social Council countered by saying that the market, not politicians, would determine what currencies countries would keep on hand for reserves. "The dollar has proved not to be a stable store of value, which is a requisite for a stable reserve currency," the U.N. World Economic and Social Survey 2010 said.
...
The report supports replacing the dollar with the International Monetary Fund's special drawing rights (SDRs), an international reserve asset that is used as a unit of payment on IMF loans and is made up of a basket of currencies. "A new global reserve system could be created, one that no longer relies on the United States dollar as the single major reserve currency," the U.N. report said. The report said a new reserve system "must not be based on a single currency or even multiple national currencies but instead, should permit the emission of international liquidity -- such as SDRs -- to create a more stable global financial system."

"Such emissions of international liquidity could also underpin the financing of investment in long-term sustainable development," it said.

- http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE65S40620100629

They used the key phrase "long-term sustainable development", which is a useful code for people like me who believe that all exponential money systems must fail by design. I hope that their use of that phrase means that people behind the scenes understand that reality, even if they refuse to admit it publicly because of the collapse of confidence it would create in existing exponential money systems worldwide.

Entry tags:

economy,
ethics

I moved my money!

Switching banks is not a fast process these days, but I did it! I moved from Wells Fargo bank to Financial One credit union.

It's a slow process because there are so many pieces to manage. 1) I ordered new checks. 2) I switched my paycheck direct deposit. 3) I updated my annual recurring charges (like webpage registration). Having my money split between accounts was confusing, and I discovered by happenstance last night that I didn't have enough money at the new checking account to cover my rent check! Oops! :(

For the last few weeks, the bridge leading to my bank has been under construction, so I haven't driven there to close my accounts. This morning, I finally drove across the Mississippi River (at a different bridge) and wandered back around to my bank. I closed my checking account.

I talked with a banker at a desk who helped me close my credit account. (All he did was push a desk phone at me that I used to talk with the person who closed it for me.) That one hurt more than the checking closure. Wells Fargo had given me (in the 12 years that I've had my account) a line of credit equal to my annual income. Financial One, on the other hand, has limited me to $2000 credit. That amount won't even cover a major car repair. *sigh*

But, I did it! I feel good about taking control of my own small influence over the banking industry. Washington won't effectively regulate Wall Street (in spite of reforms that the current administration is now, finally, trying to legislate). So it's up to people to individually exercise their authority. I enjoyed driving immediately afterward to my credit union, making my deposit to cover the rent check, and doing it without even having to fill out a form. They're beginning to recognize me. Not many longhaired men visit their credit union, I'm guessing.

Move Your Money. Find a bank or credit union near you.
http://moveyourmoney.info/find-a-bank

Do it! You have the power to create change! Don't accept "Too Big To Fail"!

Entry tags:

changing the oil

The last oil crunch is not decades away and not years away; it is months away, according to the U.S. government and military. Here is the information that I think will help you prepare for the change that is fast approaching.

( See the chart and read the lists... )

In summary:

Soon, energy costs will increase sharply. Do everything you can now to prepare for this change. It will affect everything. It doesn't have to end anything, though. You can easily survive the change with extra planning. Start practicing now. Purchase what you need now. Don't wait until everyone else is scrambling to adapt, because that market demand will increase product prices too.

Entry tags:

economy,
geology

economic non-recovery

I'm still a believer in zero-growth as the new worldwide paradigm. Sadly, to reach that point, there will first have to be negative-growth to reach equilibrium. Negative growth is painful. Sustainable economy is a reasonable and possible endeavor. Here's the situation as I see it:

1) Price for oil should be a lot higher than it is now. Large-scale concerns (worries about the health of the economies that consume oil) have kept the price artificially low. I find proof of this interpretation in the recent price hike that resulted only from good economic indicators. Price increases usually result from changes in supply or demand, but this price increase at the gas pump resulted only from optimism rather than actual demand. That's how eager the industry is to raise prices to their proper equilibrium.

Oil prices rose more than 2 percent on Monday to their highest since October 2008, after U.S. manufacturing, home sales and jobs data boosted optimism about a recovery in the world's top economy. The U.S. service sector grew in March at its fastest pace in nearly four years while pending home sales also rose, according to the ISM industry survey and a National Association of Realtors report on Monday. That added to optimism following Labor Department data released on Friday showing U.S. payrolls rose by 162,000 last month, the fastest rate in three years. U.S. crude oil for May delivery settled up $1.75 to $86.62 a barrel. Prices have risen by 8.3 percent since March 26, in their steepest 5-day winning streak since December.
- http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6142V820100405

2) Full-time jobs aren't coming back. The official unemployment rate seems to have leveled off finally, but that's nowhere near the same thing as a recovery. Also, the "feel" of the economy is worse than the unemployment rate would suggest. This table shows why. U3 is the "official unemployment" rate, but U6 is better at showing how the typical American is faring under the hardship. U6 is much higher than U3. People are staying unemployed, temp employed, and part-time employed for very long durations. This stall is not the same as "recovery".

3) Our industry (as currently structured) cannot recover unless cheap energy is available. Peak oil has passed, and it's not coming back. Recent news about Obama authorizing drilling off our coastlines is only good press meant to mollify conservatives. It won't actually help our underlying problem. This table (skip to page 8) shows why.

That link provides a March 2009 presentation from U.S. Department of Energy conference. They point out that after the year 2011, world energy needs will be met by this mysterious white space called "Unidentified Projects". That's a polite way of saying, "There isn't any more oil." Drilling off the coastline won't erase the gap. Drilling in Alaska won't erase the gap. The problem is that there was a limited amount of oil on the planet, and more than half of it is now gone. The Iraq war was about fighting to keep our hands on some of the last productive fields on Earth.

4) Obama has also announced plans to help build new nuclear reactors. I've already explained why building new nuclear reactors is the same bad decision as drilling for more oil. Limited resource, dwindling supplies, no long term energy solution.

5) The dollar is toast. World banks are colluding to keep it propped up beyond its natural lifespan. We chose an exponential function for the creation of our currency, and such a decision embeds late-life hyperinflation into the structure of the thing. We've reached that point finally. It's not Bush's asshattery, it's not Obama's lousy financial regulation, and it's not the corrupt Federal Reserve Bank. It's the mathematical model that we chose decades ago for our money. It's absolutely the wrong model.

"The fact of the matter is, the US government is now conducting weekly Treasury auctions that are as large as quarterly auctions were just a few years ago. Exponential increase, anyone? $165 billion in a single week is an enormous pile to unload."
- http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/shell-game-continues/37778

In summary, I think this is what zero growth feels like. This is what life will be like after the crash. (Yes, I said after the crash.) Learn to live with less stuff (energy, tech, travel), and life will actually be rather nice.

I went out to garden this morning after 8am, but the temperature was barely above freezing. I got my hands in the dirt and they went numb, so I came back inside. It's nearly time to plant, and I'm eager!

Entry tags:

economy

vote for derangement

So should people be held to moral responsibility for their intellectual acts? I think so. That instinct is what drives a lot of politics, I think.

Well, now you have the opportunity to vote in a poll to determine who wins responsibility for contributing most to the recent global financial collapse. It was previously called the "Ignoble Prize in Economics", but I figure that somebody rightfully complained about use of that name and the confusion that would ensue. This poll is now called the "Dynamite Prize in Economics".

There are 10 selections from which to choose. Pick 3 of them. Each includes a short explanation to justify their inclusion on the list. You may vote here:
http://rwer.wordpress.com/vote-here-for-the-dynamite-prize-in-economics/

I kept wanting to choose someone to blame for getting the whole concept of economics wrong, but really this poll is limited only to the recent financial problems. It took me a while to decide who should get "kudos" for that.

I finally decided to blame Milton Friedman, Larry Summers, but especially Eugene Fama's "efficient market hypothesis" as the central failure.

In finance, the efficient-market hypothesis (EMH) asserts that financial markets are "informationally efficient", or that prices on traded assets (e.g., stocks, bonds, or property) already reflect all available information, and instantly change to reflect new information.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis

In other words, baseball trading cards are valuable because they have a price tag attached to them. Never doubt the price tag. Hooey.