Your success in your career
will be in direct proportion to
what you do after
you've done what you are expected to do.
Brian Tracy
Johan Santana's No-Hitter
Faithful readers know that I've been a Minnesota Twins/Vikings fan, despite never having lived in Minnesota. (It's an admittedly odd love/hate story: I was playing in Little League on a 1-19 baseball team called the Twins. We were playing my middle brother's team the Yankees. Some 8-year-old on my team went around saying I had a girlfriend, which is of course the ultimate insult at the time. I grabbed him and told him to knock it off; my manager grabbed me, threw me out of the dugout, and told me to go home. I decided instead to go into the stands and cheer on my little brother. My manager saw me there and threw me off the team. He wouldn't even let me attend the fried chicken banquet dinner featuring native son, former NY Yankee star Bobby Richardson. I discovered there was a major league team called the Twins, and the rest is history. Just imagine the shame of my brother: I'm a Texas native, but my next four siblings, like my parents, were born in Massachusetts, all of them Red Sox fans, of course.)
Last Friday, Johan Santana, a two-time former Minnesota Twins Cy Young award pitcher, pitched the first no-hitter in NY Mets' history. (I had planned to publish this tribute earlier this past weekend.) In all fairness, I should note that there was a controversial foul ball call in the sixth inning where the 8-0 losing Cardinals claimed that the ball was fair.
STOP THE MADNESS:
Gov. Brown's (D-CA) Train Going Nowhere
When You Lose Control and You Have No Soul
With No One Beside You You're Goin' Nowhere
Don't you just love how the Obama Administration just throws around $3.5B of future tax payments by new generations of American workers; apparently Democratic politicians didn't get Lionel train sets as little boys and have been obsessing about them ever since... (I wonder if we could get the train set people to agree to give these legislators their very own train sets if they'll just give up this indulgent ideological nonsense...) I ranted several days back on Brown's (roll my eyes...) self-serving, disingenuous rationalization of his money-losing-operation-from-day-1 boondoggle. (In particular, I decided to focus on just one progressive urban legend, that we needed the "genius" of government to establish the interstate highway system.)
The news article says that there is no direct rail line between Los Angeles and San Francisco (the target of the project). Assuming the idea of a direct rail line is economically viable, why wouldn't they be pushing more conventional railway projects, probably a fraction of the price? (I understand the fact that the bullet trains are faster--but "cool railroad trains" aren't viable. This isn't about trying to impress some progressive snob at an elitist cocktail party; this is about special interests trying to spend the resources of the many.)
Some key takeaways (my edits):
- "A new poll shows almost three fifths would oppose the bullet train and halt public borrowing if given another chance to vote. Almost seven in 10 said that, if the train ever does run between Los Angeles and San Francisco, they would "never or hardly ever" use it."
- "California's politicians have until Aug 31 to give a final green light to an initial $6 billion, 130-mile section of track in the Central Valley. Only a simple majority vote is needed in the Democrat controlled legislature."
- "There was also disillusion with the handling of the project so far. It was initially projected to cost $45 billion and [to finish] by 2020. Last autumn the state-run California High-Speed Rail Authority, which is overseeing it, disclosed the cost had more than doubled to $98.5 billion with a finish date of 2033. $30 billion was shaved off that estimate, but only by reducing the speed of the trains and using sections of existing slow track. The state [raised] $10 billion from bonds and secured an injection of $3.5 billion in stimulus money from the Obama administration.The project is still $54.9 billion short of what is needed. In April the state's own Legislative Analyst's Office called the funding plan vague and speculative."
An Introduction to Interest Rates--and the Fed
There are some telltale signs when you know things aren't healthy and the economy is in a bubble. For me during the Internet/Nasdaq bubble, it's when I saw kids dropping out of college to take jobs at $50K or more a year, and investor gurus saying that profits don't matter anymore: it's a new economy.
But there are other things which I consider "panic buying" which can occur during fads (remember Cabbage Patch Kids, Beanie Babies, Furbies, etc.: I still remember buying a goddaughter a Furby). But it could happen with big items: I remember diesel VW Rabbits were so popular during high gas prices that there were news reports of a line of cars following auto truck trailers into dealerships, lines of potential home buyers showing up for new house listings overnight, condos changing ownership 3 or 4 times before completion.
One people may not remember is the fact that the high tech industry went through a soft patch; there were a lot of surplus like-new tech equipment available (e.g., from bankrupt companies) I remember reading an article about this a few years back, that part of the hyper-growth was caused by companies worried about getting equipment and placing multiple orders, which would get cancelled if and when one of the orders was fulfilled. Thus, the perceived demand was illusory; plus companies accelerated purchases to guarantee delivery. So as progressives genuflect at the altar of Saint Bill Clinton, how he found the "secret" for balanced budgets (no, not the tightwad GOP House which quashed his spending schemes, but high tax rates with government treasuries brimming with tax revenues for unsustainable bubble capital gain profits), let's not forget how accelerated purchases drove up prices and profits--and borrowed from purchases that should have been made during the Bush years.
Professor Antony Davies does a good job here describing how ACTIVIST manipulation of interest rates (i.e., by the Fed) is almost never correct. There's the question of savings versus consumption; there's a yin-yang concept here where low interest rates encourage near-term consumption (at the expense of longer-term consumption). Another issue which I don't believe Davies points out is the issue of malinvestment. Take, for instance, a disproportionate amount of resources on a relatively unproductive investment/asset, home ownership.
Political Humor
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
The Kinks, "Tired of Waiting For You"
