Dr. Marc Farber, one of Wall Street's best performing money managers and economists was speaking in Tokyo, telling the world's biggest and most powerful money managers to "buy gold and farmland". Sound familiar?:
The world’s most powerful investors have been advised to buy farmland, stock up on gold and prepare for a “dirty war” by Marc Faber, the notoriously bearish market pundit, who predicted the 1987 stock market crash.The bleak warning of social and financial meltdown, delivered today in Tokyo at a gathering of 700 pension and sovereign wealth fund managers.
I needed some company. It has been getting lonely out here.
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I feel badly for dupes on the Left. You folks were not bad people, and you actually believed you were doing or agitating for the right thing. You did not realize just how much the international credit markets were funding all of your pet programs, and now they are imploding.
I remember the aging hippies living in downtown Manhattan when I lived there in the 1980's and '90s. Yuppies were ascendent, and the social opportunities that made protesting so much fun - I mean, sex, drugs, rock n roll and college girls - were slipping away from the beard and tie-dye set (especially the former college girls... they found 7 figure Wall Street guys sooooo much more interesting than the Greenwich Village bad boyz... Who'd a thunk it). And they were PISSED. Still are. Well, I understand... it sucks to be them.
And now here we are, with Peak Credit and Peak Oil et al, and everything these folks believed in a and dedicated their lives to is proving to be a mirage.
Its going to be OK. This too, will pass. When the urge to mourn has gone, come on over, grab a shovel, and help your fellow man by "teaching him to fish". That will work better than "giving him a fish that somebody else bled for".
Boys & Girls Clubs, local YMCA's, Food Pantries, Good Will, etc... could really use your help. Step away from the computer and go get your hands dirty. This goes for those "family values" nose pickers, too.
Peak Oil and Peak Credit gave us Peak FOS. Hopefully, Peak FOS will contract in supply in line with Peal Oil and Peak Credit.
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So much for the Natural Gas glut. Storage is 2.9% below last year and only .7% above the 5 year average. One hurricane, hot summer, or extended winter and this will be the hottest ticket in town. Given that we have 17% real unemployment and industry is still reeling (NG is a major industrial fuel), this is quite the development.
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Read this article. When I was a young man I worked at day labor jobs during the summer and on weekends both during and after college for a while. At my best gig I made $50 per day digging trenches in the Florida sun for sprinkler systems at McMansions. I cut grass, painted, dug culverts, pumped gas... anything to earn a buck. And, perhaps because I was young, I was thrilled to have money in my pocket. I am embarrassed when I read articles like this: what do Americans expect? That a machine right out of the "Jetsons" can pick ripe tomatoes or blueberries without a bruise and beam them, Star Trek style, to the local grocery store? Don't like mind numbing work? Me neither. So I saved my dough, moved back home to New York after college, and eventually went into business with the money I saved (I worked for 2 of my older brother's trucking business for almost a year first, selling heating oil and gasoline door to door among a million other hats I wore on any given day. Working there was the business education of a lifetime, and I realize that not everyone is so fortunate. My brothers were much older, and were a great resource and inspiration over the years). What else does one do when you aren't qualified to do anything? I sold the business for what seemed at the time a decent payday (actually the business went bust, but the assets I had accumulated were very sellable - same thing as far as I was concerned). I asked myself, where do they pay unqualified people the most money? Hollywood and Wall Street. Well, I was already living in New York, so off to Wall Street I went. I figured, these guys are making 10X, 20X, what I am... and they ain't 10X smarter than me... (as a matter of fact, and IMHO, I couldn't think as slow as many of those folks if I were sleeping... but there WERE some REALLY smart guys there, too.)
The point is, not everybody gets everything they want all of the time. Some folks just have to start at the bottom digging sprinkler culverts and work their way up. No, life is NOT fair, and there is NO HOPE that any government program can make it fairer for all concerned. Fair is an abstract, and we all know about abstracts in the eye of the beholder...
Nope, the problem is "expectations". Those "expectations" are being fixed (crushed) right now.
19 comments:
The traders don't apparently believe you on the natural gas thing. The price per million BTUs of natgas has been falling the last few days and is now under $5. I send more $$ in for my gas bill each month to even out the bills (so I have money on account for those higher winter month bills), and I'm going to have to drop my monthly natgas payment to $100 instead of $200. We are still awash in natural gas.
Is that how you see it?
See, I see it that the market does not like the looks of the industrial economy (or the turn the thermastat up I'm cold economy), and that the end of winter is upon us and there is no way we are going to run out for this heating season.
Opportunities to speculate in NG are there, but they are not "sure things". I have always called NG "The Career Ruiner" - and for very, very good reason.
We are in the shoulder period for both Oil and NG. Talk to me during hurricane season.
My oldest kid failed miserably in high school We tried to get him some extra help but he was rejected for special education when his IQ tested at 153 and he was the first to admit he didn't give it much effort. He went to a community college, flunked out and we sent to a second, not because we thought he was likely to do better but to keep him in health insurance. He flunked out again, got married, held a coulple of dead end jobs, had tow kids, had his wife leave him and the kids with apile of bills and no prospects. He was however, working the whole time on a computer code that detected malware. He did it on nights and weekends while caring for two tiny kids. Long story short, his internet security company is a major success. He works from home, is still single and raising his kids and he's making more money than I will ever see. He says the first million was hard but the next several were a lot easier. I love success stories, especially my kids'.
Hi Kathy:
That is a heart warming story...
I was pointing out that somebody has to get the short end of the stick, no point fooling yourself if its you. Best thing is to get to work and work your way out of it.
Kathy:
BTW... tell your son that holding on to a few bucks is just as challenging as making them. Money is awfully slippery. It is easy to lose on dumb investments or squander living just a tad higher than the money can support.
I should know... I have been bust twice and I HATED it.
I do follow Faber on the same days I'm searching for Jim Rogers videos, but I'm having trouble seeing how investing in farmland is even realistic unless you are going to actually "farm." Aren't the property taxes substantial? I'm sure animals would need some care. I would think as a long term thing a few bars of gold would make more sense. You can't just leave a field alone to go fallow as an investment, can you? God knows who will set up light housekeeping in your absense.
On another topic, it is kinda interesting that the U.S. demand for gasoline is still pretty much the same as a year ago -- kinda where it is supposed to be (around 8.8 million barrels per day) -- yet the oil and gasoline in storage continues to rise. How is it the U.S. is going thru a continuing deflationary depression, yet managing to buy just as much gasoline as before, with oil & gasoline imports dropping (as Jeffers has noted), and yet energy in storage isn't coming down .... where's all this oil coming from? ....
B,
Oh the driving is still happening remember America's favorite past time and credit cards filling the gap. I have noticed that the rush hour traffic is a lttle less slow and the working hours and after hours may have increased. Job seekers, people that don't care,etc. Who knows. The coming months of imports and ethonal data should look interesting.
We have to argue with him to spend a dime on himself. He flies coach (when it's his dime), still lives in the same three bedroom apartment and drives a used care. He is generous to his younger brothers and sisters and to his kids but not crazily so. I think being really poor, which he was, makes you either very frugal or very foolish. He takes after mom and dad, thank goodness. But you Greg, obviously didn't earn your wealth because you weren't eating out of garbage cans when you were little. Some people are just nasty. I put it off to poor upbringing.
Kathy:
I am happy to hear your son is frugal... I am with him... I would NEVER fly anything but coach unless it was an upgrade.
I am not as wealthy as you might think... just "well fixed" and very, very thankful... just enough to keep me in the middle class IF I don't squander resources. What resources I have are to fund educations and weddings and provide for my wife in her later years... why this jerk finds fault with this is beyond me.
Like you said, poor upbringing.
Bur:
You can buy land (just google) Iowa Land Exchange and rent it.
No, Ag land prop taxes are not high at all. If they were, there wouldn't be a farmer left...
Nearly half of the cultivated land in North America is rented by investors to farmers.
Adding to what Greg said.... around New England anyway, agricultural and forest land gets some fairly significant tax BREAKS as there is a multitude of programs to "enroll" such land in to keep it from being developed. When it's pulled out of many of these programs, the back taxes or penalties owed can be significant, but as long as one keeps it in forest or ag use, the rates are low, low relative to other land tax categories anyway.
The real question from the article on ag. workers is; is it reasonable for them to expect a living wage? You, Greg, had the benefit of intelligence and got out, many don't have that opportunity. How much would you have now if you'd stayed doing those jobs?
Does that mean they don't deserve enough to pay for decent accomodation, food and healthcare? Or proper, safe childcare? Maybe enough to save, or for a pension?
Sometimes the market mechanism fails. If all ag.employers 'agree' to drive wages down, whose responsibility is it to ensure a more equitable regime? If supermarket dominance forces farmers into bankruptcy if they don't reduce costs, shouldn't government step in to balance the powerplay?
I've worked in a foreign country, not in my first language and its impossible to work at your normal 'level', you just don't have the language skills, contacts and 'acceptability' to prospective employers. Many foreign workers in the UK have degrees in Poland or Latvia - these aren't stupid people and are far from lazy or unambitious, otherwise they wouldn't be there.
The market works sometimes to exploit sectors of the workforce. That's where libertarianism and republicanism fails.
Donal:
I did not address the "living wage" issue. Mostly because I don't know how to define it in an era where 17% have no wage at all.
Believe me, when I think of older workers and parents doing this kind of work I "feel their pain". When I was doing it I was young, strong, and CHILDLESS. That's the big thing.
In the 1950's and my father worked banging nails into roofs for anybody that would pay him. He had 4 sons at the time (I had not come along yet), and the family lived in a cramped 2 bedroom apartment. Was he earning a living wage? Not by today's standard, but for the time? Maybe, maybe not.
And even a "living wage" does not give one an opportunity to educate one's children easily. Nor provide much of anything beyond breakfast, lunch and dinner.
I am loathe to try and legislate things like this, because I believe we would likely do more harm than good.
Further, I think the real issue we are speaking of is "relative deprivation" as opposed to "real deprivation". Relative to most others in our society, these workers are not making a "living wage". Heck, people are making more money on unemployment from the government... and that just is sooooo wrong on sooooo many levels its a whole other discussion.
"Republicanism or Libertarianism fails"?
Come on Donal, centrally planned everything has failed miserably. The above have never been tried. Further, I will grant you that even if they were, they are NOT perfect and it would "fail" certain segments of society no matter how one might define that.
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