Malignant Money
April/05/2010 10:15 Filed in: Week in Review
There is a universal belief that with enough money life in short order will become a bed of roses, or some other silly metaphor. In that context the question now becomes, “Where’s the money?”
With more dollars floating around somewhere than in the entire history of the world, there should be money, money everywhere and inflation should be a significant worry. There is none of that. Furthermore everywhere you look for answers you don’t see or hear anything related to the present reality.
For an example in that present reality, last Thursday I took my Saturn into the Midas Muffler shop in downtown Spokane to have its brakes replaced. The reason I went there, on my previous trip to Spokane in my pickup, I had had to have the brakes replaced on it also. Not only was the pickup price about ten percent less than I figured it would have been up in Northeast Washington, I now had essentially a ten percent off coupon for my next visit to Midas. In times like these you save all the money you can.
By the time I got to the place, located on the corner of Division and Spokane Falls Boulevard, it was just a little before 10 AM, probably the busiest time of the business day. This address is just across the street from essentially the downtown core. The convention center and related theaters begin just on the opposite diagonal corner. There are at least five repair bays on the office side of the structure and about three on the other part of the L.
As I walked into the office I was met by a lady of about retirement age, and I stated I needed to get my brakes fixed and I need to know how long it will take. She says she will get an estimate, takes my keys, and walks out into the shop. There seems to be only one guy working out there and he seems to be just doing some make work activity. So working alone he finishes my estimate and tells me to come back in about an hour and a half. When I return at about 11:30 my car is ready, and it looks like the guy is doing something minor on another vehicle and there are no other business related cars either in the shop or in the parking lot. I pay my bill and I am on my way.
So on a normal business day in the center of Spokane, the largest city from Seattle to about Minneapolis, in a major national automobile repair franchise, they probably didn’t cover the overhead for the time I was there. What about the rest of the day, week, month, or year?
With more dollars floating around somewhere than in the entire history of the world, there should be money, money everywhere and inflation should be a significant worry. There is none of that. Furthermore everywhere you look for answers you don’t see or hear anything related to the present reality.
For an example in that present reality, last Thursday I took my Saturn into the Midas Muffler shop in downtown Spokane to have its brakes replaced. The reason I went there, on my previous trip to Spokane in my pickup, I had had to have the brakes replaced on it also. Not only was the pickup price about ten percent less than I figured it would have been up in Northeast Washington, I now had essentially a ten percent off coupon for my next visit to Midas. In times like these you save all the money you can.
By the time I got to the place, located on the corner of Division and Spokane Falls Boulevard, it was just a little before 10 AM, probably the busiest time of the business day. This address is just across the street from essentially the downtown core. The convention center and related theaters begin just on the opposite diagonal corner. There are at least five repair bays on the office side of the structure and about three on the other part of the L.
As I walked into the office I was met by a lady of about retirement age, and I stated I needed to get my brakes fixed and I need to know how long it will take. She says she will get an estimate, takes my keys, and walks out into the shop. There seems to be only one guy working out there and he seems to be just doing some make work activity. So working alone he finishes my estimate and tells me to come back in about an hour and a half. When I return at about 11:30 my car is ready, and it looks like the guy is doing something minor on another vehicle and there are no other business related cars either in the shop or in the parking lot. I pay my bill and I am on my way.
So on a normal business day in the center of Spokane, the largest city from Seattle to about Minneapolis, in a major national automobile repair franchise, they probably didn’t cover the overhead for the time I was there. What about the rest of the day, week, month, or year?
There is a universal belief that with enough money life in short order will become a bed of roses, or some other silly metaphor. In that context the question now becomes, “Where’s the money?”
With more dollars floating around somewhere than in the entire history of the world, there should be money, money everywhere and inflation should be a significant worry. There is none of that. Furthermore everywhere you look for answers you don’t see or hear anything related to the present reality.
For an example in that present reality, last Thursday I took my Saturn into the Midas Muffler shop in downtown Spokane to have its brakes replaced. The reason I went there, on my previous trip to Spokane in my pickup, I had had to have the brakes replaced on it also. Not only was the pickup price about ten percent less than I figured it would have been up in Northeast Washington, I now had essentially a ten percent off coupon for my next visit to Midas. In times like these you save all the money you can.
By the time I got to the place, located on the corner of Division and Spokane Falls Boulevard, it was just a little before 10 AM, probably the busiest time of the business day. This address is just across the street from essentially the downtown core. The convention center and related theaters begin just on the opposite diagonal corner. There are at least five repair bays on the office side of the structure and about three on the other part of the L.
As I walked into the office I was met by a lady of about retirement age, and I stated I needed to get my brakes fixed and I need to know how long it will take. She says she will get an estimate, takes my keys, and walks out into the shop. There seems to be only one guy working out there and he seems to be just doing some make work activity. So working alone he finishes my estimate and tells me to come back in about an hour and a half. When I return at about 11:30 my car is ready, and it looks like the guy is doing something minor on another vehicle and there are no other business related cars either in the shop or in the parking lot. I pay my bill and I am on my way.
So on a normal business day in the center of Spokane, the largest city from Seattle to about Minneapolis, in a major national automobile repair franchise, they probably didn’t cover the overhead for the time I was there. What about the rest of the day, week, month, or year?
Where is all the economic stimulus money, or all the other money that is supposed to be in the pipeline showing that the Great Recession is over and happy days will soon be here again?
For my part, if I had any access to capital, I could probably put to work internally five highly trained engineers and scientists, and externally I could hire another five outside firms to do some significant consulting work. But whenever I try to follow what might be a channel to some potential financing, I a met with another story of someone trying to just hold on until — something gets a little better.
It is apparent to me from out here in the American heartland, all the talking heads I see on my television screen don’t have a clue on what is going on out in the country. They all have their six to seven figure New York or DC salaries, and they believe that the rest of the country, while not eating cake, will in someway come out of the current financial problem. In case any of them read this, things out here are perhaps as bad as they have ever been, and that may include the Great Depression, because back then the nation was much more agricultural than it is today.
Could it be the greatest country the world has ever known is suffering from a new form of malignant monetary cancer? The malignant adjective added for a redundant effect. Cancer is a disease in which the cancer cells basically consume the healthy cells and without very aggressive treatment, the host quickly dies. Have the bailouts, stimulus, and all of the other enlightened methods of financial leverage created to save the country, have the opposite effect and instead of helping have only made America’s problem dangerously worse?
I’m just a country boy, but from what I can see from this vantage point, it surely looks like the 4000 point (40%) rise in the Dow and the $30 rise in the price of oil is really based upon the wishful thinking of isolated money market managers, creating a world in which, as we described at the beginning, they are continuing their monetary rose culture, and essentially the rest of the world — well in their narcissistic attitude, really doesn’t matter.
Have you seen my new rose garden? It is right there in the neighborhood of Manhattan, where Wall Street, Fifth Avenue, and the rest of the Big Apple all create the zenith of human civilization. This of course is where the marble halls of the other Washington also get the roses they use to create new financial incentives to make their rich friends richer. Tumors eventually kill the host. While I make no claim to be a prophet, one cannot help see a similarity between this description and what you find in Revelation 18.
Be that as it may, verse 4 from that chapter says, “Come out from her.” There still exists a remnant that can understand, that banks need to be banks, not market makers in commodities and insecure securities. Wealth is created in and through small businesses growing and producing new wealth and new jobs. You hear some shallow words to that effect, but they are words, just words. Shallow is not a pond, but a mud puddle! All the government and Wall Street money goes into their rose garden. That will not really change if all the liberal democrats are replaced with conservative republicans. Cancer is cancer, and warm fuzzy words and economic platitudes won’t cure the narcissistic malignancy.
The only way that will change, as we reported in the Wonder Springs Chronicle last week, is that metaphoric change occurs when American sheep are transformed into communities of wolves. That begins when the American people begin to look at their own personal strengths and not to Wall Street and Washington DC to give them pre-planted rose bushes. Americans again need to seek the beauty of the now wild roses that have graced old homestead properties, long after the homesteaders had to abandon the land to get a job in the city.
With more dollars floating around somewhere than in the entire history of the world, there should be money, money everywhere and inflation should be a significant worry. There is none of that. Furthermore everywhere you look for answers you don’t see or hear anything related to the present reality.
For an example in that present reality, last Thursday I took my Saturn into the Midas Muffler shop in downtown Spokane to have its brakes replaced. The reason I went there, on my previous trip to Spokane in my pickup, I had had to have the brakes replaced on it also. Not only was the pickup price about ten percent less than I figured it would have been up in Northeast Washington, I now had essentially a ten percent off coupon for my next visit to Midas. In times like these you save all the money you can.
By the time I got to the place, located on the corner of Division and Spokane Falls Boulevard, it was just a little before 10 AM, probably the busiest time of the business day. This address is just across the street from essentially the downtown core. The convention center and related theaters begin just on the opposite diagonal corner. There are at least five repair bays on the office side of the structure and about three on the other part of the L.
As I walked into the office I was met by a lady of about retirement age, and I stated I needed to get my brakes fixed and I need to know how long it will take. She says she will get an estimate, takes my keys, and walks out into the shop. There seems to be only one guy working out there and he seems to be just doing some make work activity. So working alone he finishes my estimate and tells me to come back in about an hour and a half. When I return at about 11:30 my car is ready, and it looks like the guy is doing something minor on another vehicle and there are no other business related cars either in the shop or in the parking lot. I pay my bill and I am on my way.
So on a normal business day in the center of Spokane, the largest city from Seattle to about Minneapolis, in a major national automobile repair franchise, they probably didn’t cover the overhead for the time I was there. What about the rest of the day, week, month, or year?
Where is all the economic stimulus money, or all the other money that is supposed to be in the pipeline showing that the Great Recession is over and happy days will soon be here again?
For my part, if I had any access to capital, I could probably put to work internally five highly trained engineers and scientists, and externally I could hire another five outside firms to do some significant consulting work. But whenever I try to follow what might be a channel to some potential financing, I a met with another story of someone trying to just hold on until — something gets a little better.
It is apparent to me from out here in the American heartland, all the talking heads I see on my television screen don’t have a clue on what is going on out in the country. They all have their six to seven figure New York or DC salaries, and they believe that the rest of the country, while not eating cake, will in someway come out of the current financial problem. In case any of them read this, things out here are perhaps as bad as they have ever been, and that may include the Great Depression, because back then the nation was much more agricultural than it is today.
Could it be the greatest country the world has ever known is suffering from a new form of malignant monetary cancer? The malignant adjective added for a redundant effect. Cancer is a disease in which the cancer cells basically consume the healthy cells and without very aggressive treatment, the host quickly dies. Have the bailouts, stimulus, and all of the other enlightened methods of financial leverage created to save the country, have the opposite effect and instead of helping have only made America’s problem dangerously worse?
I’m just a country boy, but from what I can see from this vantage point, it surely looks like the 4000 point (40%) rise in the Dow and the $30 rise in the price of oil is really based upon the wishful thinking of isolated money market managers, creating a world in which, as we described at the beginning, they are continuing their monetary rose culture, and essentially the rest of the world — well in their narcissistic attitude, really doesn’t matter.
Have you seen my new rose garden? It is right there in the neighborhood of Manhattan, where Wall Street, Fifth Avenue, and the rest of the Big Apple all create the zenith of human civilization. This of course is where the marble halls of the other Washington also get the roses they use to create new financial incentives to make their rich friends richer. Tumors eventually kill the host. While I make no claim to be a prophet, one cannot help see a similarity between this description and what you find in Revelation 18.
Be that as it may, verse 4 from that chapter says, “Come out from her.” There still exists a remnant that can understand, that banks need to be banks, not market makers in commodities and insecure securities. Wealth is created in and through small businesses growing and producing new wealth and new jobs. You hear some shallow words to that effect, but they are words, just words. Shallow is not a pond, but a mud puddle! All the government and Wall Street money goes into their rose garden. That will not really change if all the liberal democrats are replaced with conservative republicans. Cancer is cancer, and warm fuzzy words and economic platitudes won’t cure the narcissistic malignancy.
The only way that will change, as we reported in the Wonder Springs Chronicle last week, is that metaphoric change occurs when American sheep are transformed into communities of wolves. That begins when the American people begin to look at their own personal strengths and not to Wall Street and Washington DC to give them pre-planted rose bushes. Americans again need to seek the beauty of the now wild roses that have graced old homestead properties, long after the homesteaders had to abandon the land to get a job in the city.