i cannot get over the fact that we are merely apes (Las Vegas)

Today 27 Feb 2011, now, this week …month,  I’m part of a team that’s in Nevada blowing through wads of taxpayer’s money to sit around and do nothing.   (And for those of you who don’t share the experience, doing nothing really sucks)
We are in Las Vegas, the pinnacle of pointless self consumption.  I stood in a bar next to the hotel, it was crowded with people wanting to watch a fight on tv.  All I could see was two apes sluggishly bashing at each other and a drunken crowd cheering them on.  ….mostly guys keeping 3/4 of an eye on the screens and the other 1/4 on the few women in the bar.  False, empty enthusiasm either way.

Walking through a casino was to view a showcase of human shells..  desperation and hopelessness, emptied lives, totally disgusting.  Vampires produce nothing.

—-

31 Mar 2011
Well that didn’t last.
We stood around doing virtually nothing, usually for 12 hours or so per day.  There was no direction or even communication of goals that we might work toward.  Asking usually resulted in nothing or in being directed to some small task that might take 10 minutes.

So, we’d “work” all day and then head back to the hotel at night.  I’d like to have seen Red Rocks canyon or something like that, but when your tired and it’s dark there doesn’t seem much point.

Eventually I got sent to the ground-truth site.  I’m not clear on why, other than to be an escort for someone else.  Surprisingly, while there I got told to follow the spectral group and see what they do.  I did.  They were actually doing work, pretty interesting stuff too.   I liked being around them, helping out where I could.

There were some classes for the analysts, I sat in on them.  Some of these were presentations on the topic at hand, and how we were attempting to defeat them.   Others were in the field, we cooked up some of the various parts.  The shocker was how damned easy it all was…   assuming you knew what you were doing.

Otherwise the in-flight tasks proved to be critical but very mundane.  Turn the computers on, start some programs (something that could easily be batched), verify all is running, gaze out the window for 4 hours.  Yeah, not exactly what I thought I’d be doing, and not interesting enough to keep me around for long.

Meanwhile, Monica was growing less and less happy with our time apart.  It was getting pretty bad.  We had talked and agreed to postpone a decision until I returned from the testing in Vegas.  It seemed very unlikely I’d continue beyond that point.

Then a routine exam found a lump in Monica’s breast.  That was it, I headed home.  Thankfully my boss was kind and understanding about this.  Odd though, neither he nor I ever brought up the possibility of returning to work if the lump was found to be benign.

It was benign.
—-

Some things I did like about Vegas…
I liked having my own space and not being asked about what I’m doing or why I’m doing something in a certain way.  …at least some of the time.    I didn’t feel pressured to eat this or buy that, I could just relax and do what I thought best without getting hung up on it.   Minimal internal conflict.
On the very rare occasion when I could get away, I felt so much more free than back home.  I didn’t feel so trapped by expectations that any relationship carries.   It was a nice break.

But in the end, I can say with certainty that I have zero interest in ever returning to Vegas.

Houseland is Changing..

It’s been a gradual change, but I finally noticed..

I was updating a music server (SqueezeCenter) that runs on the house’s NAS (networked attached storage).  And it occurred to me that a year or so had gone by since this particular little beastie was setup.   Surely by now there’d be a really cheap, stand alone, minimal, tiny linux box that would run a media server.  That’d take the burden off of the NAS and maybe allow files to be served slightly faster while eliminating the worry of nuking our primary storage while updating the music server.

Then I started thinking about small, general purpose computing devices laying around the house..   the hardware side of SqueezeCenter is one such device..  so is my iPhone..   I’ve seen video of linux running on mp3 players..  etc.    A quick look online revealed several small, low power boxes that would run linux, serving pages over a network as the display interface.  They’re running about 100 bucks at the moment.

On the other side..    we’ve got many hundreds of music CDs stored in boxes.   They were scanned years ago, haven’t used them since, yet we still haul them around.   Obsolete media, but then I only got rid of my last vinyl record 3 years ago.
And, despite our attempts to purge books, we still have several bookshelves full of dead trees.

I’m thinking both media, CDs & books, need to head to the recycling bin.     ..with a few prize exceptions.

Luckily we never did get into buying movies, either on tape or disc.

All of this kind of ????  … well, what to call it?..   I mean the music, the thoughts, the words, not the media…     I hate the term ‘content’, both because of its corporate, commoditized flavor and for the fact that it’s a misnomer.   “Contained” in what?    Ok.       I don’t have a term for these things  (I’m vetoing ‘media’ for obvious reasons).     “Art works” is just trying too hard.

Anyway..  all of these things are basically, or will be, available on demand.  Why should I keep a hardcopy version around?    My struggle now is..   do I keep a softcopy local or just rely on services, like Pandora or Rhapsody.   We’ve already used both of these for years.  They’ve proven to be reliable.

Monogamy and the primate within

One foolish monkey’s opinion, your reality may vary..

The idea that we should a maintain lifelong, monogamous relationship is a fallacy and a myth that does more harm than good.

I’m a guy in my late 30’s, been married for a decade.  I’ve never had an affair, but that has had its price.

The culture I was raised in presented monogamous marriage as the obvious (and only) path allowed for any half-respectable adult.  Our parents didn’t talk about relationships, and made sure to hide anything that disturbed the reflecting pool waters of the image of a solid, monogamous marriage     ..well, up until the point of divorce.   The image presented prior to such meltdowns led us to believe that our “wild oats”, our need for a variety of sexual partners over time, would settle down once we either had matured enough or “found the right person”.   While there is a tiny fragment of truth in that belief, I think it would be somewhat immoral or deceitful to not warn the young that this idea of “happily ever after”  is mostly full of shit.

–what’s wrong with this picture?
How we really are:  we can be happily monogamous for a while, a couple to a few years at most, but we are simply driven, programmed, to need some variation over time.  Isn’t it a bit overly-demanding to seek all of our core emotional, social, and sexual needs from just one person?  Our closest relatives, great apes, don’t prescribe to monogamy, nor did we until fairly recently (given our 250k year run so far).  I believe that we’re more social than the current cultural norms would allow, and that monogamy, like our lost practice of community, creates a lot of problems.

This greater social need for more connectedness is near the core of our programming, to suppress it likely causes problems that grow with time..   eventually it will lead to a distortion of emotions, resentment and agony.
Monogamy drives us into an emotional corner, the walls formed by cultural expectations, norms, mores   …  the animal thus trapped must lash out, and the only available target is his/her partner.
My best guess is that neither women nor men want a single partner forever, yet the very heart of what we need in our relationships will result in some amount of turmoil; jealousy, possesiveness, etc…    ..we want any lover of ours to be ours alone, yet we want to have multiple lovers ourselves.    This is ok, we’re humans, we generally aren’t rational, we readily hold conflicting, self-centered views.  This is the truth, so be it.   Besides, all relationships require work and dealing with such issues in an open, honest manner may effectively address them.
Options for a non-monogamous path:

Protectionism.   Lie, cover up your affairs.   We’ve learned to lie for a reason, it’s helpful at times.  Here the lie would be to protect the feelings of your primary partner.  It’s inefficient and deceitful, but may be a good thing.  –gotta point out, the lie is NOT to cover up the feelings of guilt that society tells us we should feel about “cheating”,  I’m ok with that aspect.  You should never be pressured to feel guilt for a basic, biologically driven need.  The lie is intended to keep the primary relationship distanced from the pains of jealousy.  If the lie is revealed, anger should, undoubtedly, be expected.  In the end though it may help get things back on track to know that the time, care and energy put into the failed lie was out of considerable respect and consideration of your partner.
But maintaining these lies, every if all parties agree on taking this path, will surely undermine trust in other aspects of the relationships.  Wouldn’t it?

What if the feelings of being deceived, or left out, or jealous was removed by being more open to start with?   I can’t see it how it’d work if your partner announced, “hey, just to keep you in the loop and to be honest and open, I’m going to start hunting for a fling next week, so look out.”     Or, “I’m going to go hang out with Sarah tomorrow, we may end up fucking a bit.”    — but *maybe* there’s some way that this might work?   I’m skeptical, but also see my perspective and what I consider ‘permissible’ is HEAVILY influenced by the culture I’m in, the same one that gave me the lie of monogamy to begin with.

<b> I would very much like to here from others who have tried to find a better path than “happily ever after”, or those that are questioning how things are…</b>

Earth’s Environment… oops

March 2009

The late 1980’s was when I became aware of the impact that humans were having own the Earth’s environment.  At the time recycling was unheard of, except for the collection of deposit money on glass soft drink bottles and then on aluminum cans.  Facts were few and far between, and no one was listening.

Image of Peter Singer via Wikipedia

Mad Cow disease (Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease in humans) was in the news and this drove me away from consuming beef.  A modest reduction in my personal footprint.  Before Peter Singer became well known, some of us had already considered the core of his ideas on cruelty and responsibility in relation to eating meat, at least in an informal manner.  These ideas brought me to elminate pork from my diet and, for a while all meat.

By the mid-nineties the multitude of problems with conventional farming practices became fairly well known.  Although difficult to find, I began buying what organic food I could find and afford.  By the late nineties the term “organic” had been redefined by the government, and mildly co-opted by big agriculture.  At the same time awareness of the positive aspects of buying more local foods became widespread.  Again I followed along.

Other attempts were made to lessen my personal impact; driving a car less and smarter, using a bicycle more, growing some of my own food, lowering my power consuption at home, etc.

With Monica, I became politically active.  Writing and meeting with politicians, trying to raise their awareness and influence their voting.  We attended protests and donated to the groups we thought most effective.  For a short while, we even started a group to raise awareness about genetically modified foods.  The FishBerries protested, attempted to wrangle the local grocery chain Wegmans into avoiding modified food in their own line.  Another group we joined attempted to monitor and force the chemical and manufacturing arm of Kodak to at least abide by what weak laws there were regarding air and ground water pollution.  There were a few, hard won, victories, but Kodak was big and knew how to get away all kinds of crap…   arrogantly waltzing around the rules, making a real mess, and denying any responsibility.

Somewhere at the end of the nineties a worrying idea occurred to me.

It was clear that drastic action by everyone on the planet was required in order to avoid a global environmental degradation that would at least be very, very expensive (and thus drive more people into a marginal existence) and could be a complete catastrophe for our kind.   But the nay-sayers, obstructionists, and religious-right were fighting even the mere idea that there might me a problem, let alone actually doing anything about it.  Change was not coming quickly, but the human impact continued to escalate.

The idea was that in large groups we tend to only react to issues, and only after procrastinating as long as possible.  We do not actively pursue preventative measures to foreseen novel threats.  So, if we humans need some critical amount of threat to amass before taking action, then would the “environmental movement” end up causing more harm than good?

Would minor changes lull us into believing the problems were being addressed, only serving to delay the arrival of of the level of threat require to garner a significant reaction?

It’s 2009, and very, very little has been done to lower our environmental impact.  What has been done has been out-paced by our growth and consumption.  Currently it is estimated that around 1982 was the year we began to consume more resources than the Earth could sustain.  And in the last 6 months, a few prominent researchers have drawn the conclusion that even if we could reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to zero, overnight, it would not stop a dramatic rise the the average global temperature and the associated climate change.    (yes, climate change is only one problem)

So, by attempting to follow what seems at first glance to be a more responsible approach to living and consuming are we really just fooling ourselves, and actually drawing out the misery and cost of the mess we’ve made?

Maybe we addressed the technical side of the issue effectively; measuring, modeling, and proposing solutions.  But I think we did so without taking the nature large groups of our own species into account.

Economic Outlook 2008

10 Oct 2008

Bought today: GLD 75 at ~89

Plan: Market will continue to fall, a new wave should start next week as 3Q 401k statements were sent out this week. People will finally get scared, especially since the 700B bailout is being talked about as a failure.

Hold current liquid positions for a bit (1 to 4 months), then buy. Don’t get in a hurry to buy, the recovery will likely be slow so the advantage to being in as early as possible is minimal.

None of the above

With very, very few exceptions, politicians disgust me.  But let’s be honest here, they are creatures created by we, the people.

I’m not really watching the candidates for US president yet.  I don’t belong to any political party so the primaries are meaningless to me.

Hillary or Obama?
Well, without having looked at either candidate in any detail, there are still a couple of tidbits about these two that stand out.   Hillary voted for the war.  I have a very difficult time getting past this fact to look at her as a potential choice.  Not to mention that while she was (effectively she’s gone) our senator she did virtually nothing.  A few populist driven votes, a couple of slices of pork..  that’s all I ever saw.   She’s certainly no Schumer (who is certainly no Moynihan).

This idea Hillary is promoting about eliminating or freezing the federal tax an gasoline..?  That’s nuts.  Yeah, let’s cut federal revenue, it’s not like our transportation infrastructure can’t be neglected for a few more years.  Yeah, let’s cut the price of gas a little.  It’ll be good to increase demand for the stuff, you know, help drive up the price and support those poor, starving oil companies.  Pure mixed nuts.

Obama, oh brother.  Where is the substance?  Where are any specific goals or plans?  The term vaporware comes to mind.  He strikes me as as the pure populist politician.  Whatever you want to hear is what he’s going to say…  in very vague terms anyway.   And I don’t really care about the guy’s private life, it’s not my business.  However, the spew about his minister, which at first I intentionally ignored, has come to bother me.  Obama was part of this guy’s congregation for 20-something years.  Now Obama denounces his minister’s views??  Hmmmm.   I see two possibilities.  Obama was either simply going to this church for show, more populist motivated behavior.  Or, he was going because he liked what he heard.  In which case 20-something years of hearing the same message will influence your views, I guarantee.  In either case I find this seriously disturbing.

McCain.  Hey there was a time when I had hope for the guy.  Up until several years ago when he started giving-in to his party’s views.  More populism.  Ug.  Combine this with his, um, we’ll just say “little tantrums” and I’m thinking the guy isn’t quite stable.   Imagine him as president and losing his marbles more and more.  I’m betting that it would take a long time for us to declare him unfit and have the vice-president step in.  A lot of damage could be done during that time.  Hell, we let a ‘sane’ president start a friggin’ war without giving us a reason backed by evidence.  I’m saying that if McCain were president and he lost even more of his grip on reality that he’d likely have a couple of years in which he could get people needlessly killed.

So, will I vote for Ron Paul?  Weeellll,  I do like the vast majority of what he says, and his voting record supports the vast majority of what he preaches.   Hmmm, I dunno.

What I really, truly, desperately, want of the ballot is None Of The Above.  I’m dead serious.  We, the people allegedly in control, need a mechanism for expressing our displeasure at the quality of the candidates available to us.  Election after election we end up choosing not the best but the least disgusting or, even worse, we vote purely on our fears by voting against a candidate rather than for one.  I say put None Of The Above on every ballot for every election.  If ‘he’ wins, so be it.  A new election is scheduled and all candidates on the ballot, including incumbents, are forbidden from running.  If the new election extends beyond the end of the incumbent’s term, the position goes vacant.

As with direct representational vote, or instant run-off ballots though we will continue to shun changing our political system.  Rationality be damned.

Economic Outlook 2007

Feb 2007

I’d like to ramble for a bit: (that’s a warning)
hmmm… let’s see… the economy:

I’ve learned a fair bit about the state of our economy in the past several years, and have yet to be able to tell a concise story, so this will be a bit jumbled.

Firstly, all the economic metrics that get thrown around have been so tweaked and pruned that they no longer reflect reality, if they ever did. Metrics such as: CPI, GDP, unemployment, productivity, etc.

For example, the cost of energy and housing have been removed from the CPI over the years. What matters here is not that you may wish to include housing costs in determining consumer prices, but the fact that the definition of CPI has been changed, yet government accounting compares CPI over the years as if it the same measurement.

Productivity included (may still include) the processing power of the average computer… which has grown exponentially. Glad I have a 3GHz processor for typing this email, sure makes me more productive!
Greenspan is the devil. He calmed the waters for a few years at a tremendous cost to the future, knowing full well what he was doing. Rather than see the real cost of a fully deficit economy begin to show up on his watch, he kept lowering interest rates, to spur the economy he said. While it’s true that for capital investments to increase, interest rates need to be low, lower than the projected profit from the investment. There is no hard number for what can be considered ‘low’, but generally once you are below 8 to 10% no more encouragement is needed. As rates fall below this, then those who shouldn’t be borrowing begin to borrow… for bigger houses, fancier cars, big screen tvs… things that do not truly add to the economy. People feel rich, although their not, and they (we) get sucked down into the easy credit trap. Our savings drops and more of our ‘productivity’ goes toward paying interest.

Trade deficit. We used to have a fairly balanced trade with the rest of the world, then the manufacturing jobs started moving to cheaper labor markets. Thus we had less to offer in return for the goods we received. The imbalance continues to grow and the only thing we can offer in return are little pieces of green paper.

China likes us buying its goods, so it keeps taking the green paper in return for stuff. But what to do with all those stacks of paper? And how can the US economy keep afloat when it’s shelling out nothing but paper? This worries the Chinese something greatly. So, we keep living on credit and they keep buying our debt… and equities and real estate…

But this will only work for so long before the amount that the Chinese are spending keeping us afloat is greater than the amount of stuff we buy from them.

We must be getting close to that point. Two years ago the Chinese Yuan was allowed, for the first time, to float, ever so slightly, independently of the USD (like less than 1%). Lately they’ve been using those stacks of USDs to buy tangible goods in markets we’re too afraid to touch… Nigerian and Ghana oil facilities, etc. And they’ve been grumbling about propping us up.

It won’t be any time too soon, because the Chinese still can’t stand on their own, but the day will come when they’ll say enough. They’ll quit buying our debts, and pull out of our markets. Stocks will drop, interest rates will be raised significantly to entice them, or someone, to keep lending us money.

Meanwhile, we keep spending more and more money. A large part of it comes from selling debts but we’ve also begun to spin up the printing press. Each additional greenback printed does one thing, lowers the value of all the other greenbacks in existence. The ‘benefit’ is that this effectively decreases our debt.

But the world isn’t blind to this game, and watching the world’s reserve currency be devalued makes many people very nervous.

A noticeable number of small countries have already begun to switch to other currencies as their reference, such as the Euro. (not a great idea, the Euro isn’t in much, if any, better shape than the USD, but what choices are there?)

The Russians now only take rubles for their oil, pretty smart on their part. The Saudis are making noise about having to take dollars, and will change if/when they can.

The value of the USD has dropped somewhere around 30% in the the past few years compared to a composite of other currencies. And continues to fall.

Lots of foreigners own US assets. As the dollar falls, more and more will begin to dump those assets in favor of safer alternatives, probably cash, treasuries, commodities, and gold (non-US of course). As with a Chinese sell-off, this will lower our stock prices, and increase interest rates. The Fed may also write even more IOUs to the Treasury.

Let’s see… then there’s the Boomers retiring. Look at any age distribution graph of the US and they (hmmm, you) stick out quite obviously. Much of their retirement money is in the market. In the next couple of years they’ll begin to cash-in those investments. Now, it won’t be a get-it-all-at-once kind of thing, but the ratio of investing to cashing-out will drop somewhat. Net effect, slightly lower stock prices.
Where to go from here? hmmm….

The USD has dropped, interest rates are high, and the market is low. This means Wal-mart will become the hot shopping spot for the wealthy, capital investments have crawled to a stop since projected profits are lower than interest rates, and those whose only retirement consist of 401k plans have forgotten what sleep is. Oh, and the Treasury is printing more money, creating a potential threat of deflation.
Now the trouble begins.

Service on the debt (Fed, State, Local, or personal) is eating up a significant portion of earnings. People and municipalities are defaulting at record rates. (A warning to those bond shopping)

The Fed is in particularly bad trouble. It’s paying interest on 7 to 10 trillion dollars of explicit debt and holds implicit debts to the tune of 60 to 80 trillion more. Social Security needs roughly $10T, Medicare needs $40T and is growing fast, Medicaid needs another $30T.

Taxes will rise tremendously. Spending will be cut. And a lot of people are going to be in trouble.

How much trouble all depends on how fast this all occurs. If the long-term interest rates climb into double digits quickly, things could get real ugly, hyper-inflation may occur. If the dollar drops like a rock, deflation could get serious… and there’s little anyone can do about it so it may turn into a stable depression.

Japan has this problem, they’re on the verge of this same collapse, with one major difference. Individually, they’ve actually been saving money and thus have some safety net. The average American 50yo has approximately $50k in retirement savings.  !!

Germany, France, and Brazil are also waiting in line to jump off the cliff. (Though Germany has made a few small changes that show they may do something about the problem…maybe.)

Here’s my take:

Years ago I moved almost all of our stocks into foreign markets, which turned out to be a good choice. It may be a bit early but we’re now getting out of stocks almost completely and moving toward treasuries and money markets (that don’t hold mortgage-backed loans!) And hopefully, we’ll empty our 401ks this year via a house purchase. And stop contributing to 401ks under the belief that income taxes will be sharply higher when it comes time for us to ‘retire’.

Of all this, I am about as confident as one could be concerning economics. And expert or not, that’s not really saying all that much.

If things get worse than this, well, it’s time to either grow your own food or get out of the country. (thus, it may not be a bad idea to hold a little cash in some other currency)

There may be things that would be worth investing in. Basic needs.. but only those made in the US, the rest will be too expensive. Lower-end housing and rentals. I heard entertainment did well in the Great Depression…

</ hr>

1. Feb2007

The US Dollar will continue to fall against other currencies. Unsure of how fast or how far.

As the Boomers start retiring, they’ll begin cashing in their 401Ks, driving the market down.

As the Dollar falls, foreign investors, which own a significant portion of both the equities and real estate market, will begin to sell. How fast this selling spreads is the primary key to how bad the economy will get.

The Fed will raise the prime in order to attempt to entice foreigners to continue to hold or buy Dollars. This is an act of desperation, which is one of two drivers for the housing market to fall.

The housing prices in the ballooned markets will implode as people realise these ‘investments’ are overpriced and credit tightens up, leaving speculators financially desperate. Thus, they will sell equities to stay afloat.

Debt at all levels is unsustainable: fed, state, muni, personal. This has been largely caused by interest rates being too low, credit to easy to get. It has ‘boosted’ the economy in a harmful way… non-self-liquidating loans hurt the economy. The Fed has and will continue to try to solve its debt problem by printing more Dollars, thus driving down the value of all currently existing Dollars. People and local govs don’t have that option and will either default or sell everything, including the kitchen sink, to try to keep a roof over their head and food in their belly.

Initially all this will result in deflation.

So, the Dollar falls, imports therefore cost more, equities fall, interest rates rise, and housing (in some areas) will fall.

More speculative: oil will soar (in Dollars), slowing transportation and production, US-based companies (what few there are [probably smaller comps]) selling overseas should do very well. Food prices might soar since we import a lot and what we grow here is largely dependent upon oil-based inputs.
Ideas for protection:

US stocks will be the first to go, so sell all now.

Interest rates will rise so medium and long term bonds are bad, bond funds are bad except for very short-term. (any bonds with mortgage, mortgage companies, mort-backed securities, FNMA, GNMA, munis, etc are awful)

Short-term Treasury Bills are probably the safest bet, no reason to buy them thru funds, buy direct. If rates go too high, look too good, get out. It could be a sign of a coming default -> like suddenly changing the maturity date on your 13 week bond to 13 months, etc.

Unsure: Foreign stocks will begin to drop shortly after interest rates rise.  ??Foreign investors who sold US equities will want to put their money somewhere, but where?? Maybe in their local stock markets, maybe in more secure bonds?? dunno. Still believe that our economy going down is big enough to drag down at least the European and Japanese markets. Dunno about Asian and South America.

So what happens now? Stocks and bonds are gone. Your 401K is gone and won’t likely recover before you retire. You can’t sell your house, and buying a house via a mortgage would be crazy.

Probably just holding cash is the safest bet. But where? Most banks hold more debt than assets. Those heavy in real estate, directly or indirectly, may close. The rating systems currently in use are not to be trusted.

Maybe keeping the cash spread over a couple of different banks that appear to be solid would be ok. Keeping paper dollars might be better.

I need more understanding of how inflation may occur As the bottom is hit, or slightly thereafter, inflation may be the big problem. Either of which is bad if the Fed truly unleashes the printing press and inflation begins, turning into hyper-inflation. Before that happens, you better have bought something tangible with the soon to be worthless paper.

 

FIXMJ

 

Economic Outlook 2006

June 2006
America is severly over-extended at all levels; personal, local, state, and federal.  The amount spending on credit is completely unsustainable and service on debt is a major component in any budget.  On the federal level, military spending is out of control while infrastructure, health care, and education have been repeatedly cut.

Globally, the only thing keeping the Dollar afloat is the continued willingness of other countries to lend us money.  There have been signs of that willingness growing weaker in the past year or so.  China is beginning to take steps away from tying its currency directly to the Dollar, for example.  And several economically minor coutries have switched to the Euro as their reference.  The Dollar has begun to slip in value over the past two years, something foreseen.

Will the falling dollar destroy the US?  No.  All that crap sold at Wal-mart surely won’t be the ‘bargain’ it is today though.  My favorite wines will cost more.  Fewer will be able to afford travel abroad.  In the end, the Dollar’s fall may be a good thing… it’ll put a more realistic price on items and may slow our disposable products mentality.

So I say the Dollar will contiune to fall, and have moved as many of our investments into foreign markets as possible.

The other question: Will the economy falter?  Hmmmm… I dunno, maybe.  There’s a housing fall on the way, health care is going ballistic, education costs are insane, energy costs are rising due to polictical instabilities and the falling Dollar, food costs get little to no coverage but have risen a lot in the past couple of years, and will continue to do so…

Add to that the silent personal debt crisis.  Which, in the end, results in less money flowing through the economy and more money being eaten up by unproductive expenditures such as interest, legal fees, and welfare.  Wage growth has fallen, it used to be ahead of inflation and has steadily decreased over the past couple of decades to, in the past couple of years, now be behind inflation.  This basically means that your ‘raise’ is actually a pay-cut.

There are other larger scale effects being applied to the economy as well.  Soil erosion has eliminated over 30% of all potential crop land in the US.  As imported food increases in price there will be more pressure to grow more at home.  But if our capacity to grow crops has been diminished then so has our ability to address the issue.

Global warming, or the impact from natural disasters, is another growing expense.

Basic infrastructure maintainence has been chronically underfunded for decades, and it’s getting more difficult to ignore the problems.  Rail, roads, bridges, water, sewer, and power distribution are all in trouble.  As these things fail there is a clear choice; pay to fix them, which will be very expensive, or let them slide, trying to patch them just enough to get by, which will be even more expensive.  The minimal maitainence approach may be the only politically feasible route, but the secondary costs to the economy, through inefficiencies, loss of capabilities, etc, will be much higher than the upfront cost of keeping all these critical components in pace with the demands upon them.

The gap between upper and lower, and upper and middle, class will contiue to grow, and probably excelerate.  The amount of people in the middle class will continue to shrink.  At the moment I’m guessing that the upper levels of technical workers will fair ok.  With education on the wane the demand will outstrip the supply.. except for outsourcing.  However, if the Dollar falls outsourcing will become less and less of a problem.  I suspect that the entertainment sector will also fair well, they always have in tough times.  The rest of the working class… well, they’re fucked.