economics
Links of the Week (posted quarterly)
Dec/05/08 14:17 Filed in: Links
I haven’t done Links of the Week in like, forever,
but I have some pretty good stuff lined up for you
this week.
A great post from the Best of Craigslist series:
Tips for Clueless People Who Get Mugged - written by one of New York’s finest
And here’s a remarkable situation: the Wall Street Journal, the bastion for Conservatives and leading economic newspaper in America, posted this article calling for the U.S. to end drug prohibition. It’s not so crazy. Really. Read the article.
Let’s End Drug Prohibition - Wall Street Journal
Now on to the economic mess/disaster/collapse/Doomsday/insert other panic-inducing word here. Let’s face it, the mainstream media is doing a terrible job of reporting on the economic crisis because 1) its complex 2) there aren’t any good visual images of the crisis (yet) and 3) it’s boring compared to OJ finally going to prison and Christmas just around the corner.
That means there’s a dearth of information available for my discerning audience that just wants to understand what the hell is going on and how we got here. I have good news for you, loyal reader. NPR is doing a phenomenal series of videos that explain in very clear terms just how big and how bad this could get, and just how convoluted the path is that lead to where we are.
Marketplace Whiteboard - a collection of videos of a guy in front of a whiteboard explaining what the hell a credit default swap is and how it messes with everyone’s money, as well as many other videos trying to bring light to an otherwise very murky situation.
I read about diet and exercise a lot. I also look for ways to get stronger and add some muscle, as well as getting rid of the fat that lives around my midsection. I have tried a few diets and turned my nose up at about a million others. I finally found one that I can do forever (because diets shouldn’t be temporary. They should be a lifestyle change) and here’s the best part: it will actually SAVE you money.
Eat Stop Eat - I’ll save you the $29.95 and let the cat out of the bag: pick two days per week (not concurrent) and don’t eat from dinner to dinner. So for me, I chose Monday and Friday. I eat dinner Sunday night, then don’t eat again until Monday night. Drink water or any other zero-calorie drink during the day. No juice or pop. And the other important part of the diet: lift weights at least 3 times per week. That’s it. The man who created the diet has a Ph.D. in nutrition and has all the numbers (including a huge boost to HGH while fasting) to back up the idea. I’ve lost five pounds since starting two weeks ago, which is a great pace for sustainable weight loss. I’ll keep you posted on long-term results.
I recently got a couple of old vacuum-tube radios from the 40’s. They sound great and really look good in my office. I found a guy in Alabama who can fix them and here’s the best part: he can add a jack to the radio that will let you plug in your ipod (or any other music-generating device) and play your music through them. So now I can play all my records that I inherited from my grandfather through an old tube-based radio and hear them the way they sounded to my grandparents. They sound great! Here’s a link to the magic radio man in Alabama:
The Old Radio Shop
Here’s a little shout-out to our atheist friends in Seattle trying to keep religion in perspective next to a nativity scene:
Missing atheist sign found in Washington State
And here’s a related post about all those atheist hate-speak evildoers in Colorado that had the nerve to put up billboards that say “Don’t believe in God? You’re not alone.” The nerve!
Atheist billboards now up in Denver
Some pitiful footage of Bush getting snubbed by world leaders:
Bush at G20 economic summit meeting
And this is the result of that snubbing
And finally, the true meaning of Christmas and other Christmas info:
According to a Christian website called Christian Answers
According to a Jewish website called Simple to Remember
A reformed Christian lays out a long and well-written case for ignoring Christmas altogether
Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping and here’s a movie about his work called What Would Jesus Buy?
and HowStuffWorks lays out How Christmas Works
So, kids, here’s all I have to say about Christmas: spend time with your family. Don’t buy a bunch of gewgaws from China that will just end up in closets or drawers or landfills. Listen to some Christmas music. Look at the moon. Remember that on the darkest day of the year, December 21, that tomorrow, the darkness will fade a little sooner in the morning and that the daylight will come again. And try sipping on one of these. You won’t regret it.
A great post from the Best of Craigslist series:
Tips for Clueless People Who Get Mugged - written by one of New York’s finest
And here’s a remarkable situation: the Wall Street Journal, the bastion for Conservatives and leading economic newspaper in America, posted this article calling for the U.S. to end drug prohibition. It’s not so crazy. Really. Read the article.
Let’s End Drug Prohibition - Wall Street Journal
Now on to the economic mess/disaster/collapse/Doomsday/insert other panic-inducing word here. Let’s face it, the mainstream media is doing a terrible job of reporting on the economic crisis because 1) its complex 2) there aren’t any good visual images of the crisis (yet) and 3) it’s boring compared to OJ finally going to prison and Christmas just around the corner.
That means there’s a dearth of information available for my discerning audience that just wants to understand what the hell is going on and how we got here. I have good news for you, loyal reader. NPR is doing a phenomenal series of videos that explain in very clear terms just how big and how bad this could get, and just how convoluted the path is that lead to where we are.
Marketplace Whiteboard - a collection of videos of a guy in front of a whiteboard explaining what the hell a credit default swap is and how it messes with everyone’s money, as well as many other videos trying to bring light to an otherwise very murky situation.
I read about diet and exercise a lot. I also look for ways to get stronger and add some muscle, as well as getting rid of the fat that lives around my midsection. I have tried a few diets and turned my nose up at about a million others. I finally found one that I can do forever (because diets shouldn’t be temporary. They should be a lifestyle change) and here’s the best part: it will actually SAVE you money.
Eat Stop Eat - I’ll save you the $29.95 and let the cat out of the bag: pick two days per week (not concurrent) and don’t eat from dinner to dinner. So for me, I chose Monday and Friday. I eat dinner Sunday night, then don’t eat again until Monday night. Drink water or any other zero-calorie drink during the day. No juice or pop. And the other important part of the diet: lift weights at least 3 times per week. That’s it. The man who created the diet has a Ph.D. in nutrition and has all the numbers (including a huge boost to HGH while fasting) to back up the idea. I’ve lost five pounds since starting two weeks ago, which is a great pace for sustainable weight loss. I’ll keep you posted on long-term results.
I recently got a couple of old vacuum-tube radios from the 40’s. They sound great and really look good in my office. I found a guy in Alabama who can fix them and here’s the best part: he can add a jack to the radio that will let you plug in your ipod (or any other music-generating device) and play your music through them. So now I can play all my records that I inherited from my grandfather through an old tube-based radio and hear them the way they sounded to my grandparents. They sound great! Here’s a link to the magic radio man in Alabama:
The Old Radio Shop
Here’s a little shout-out to our atheist friends in Seattle trying to keep religion in perspective next to a nativity scene:
Missing atheist sign found in Washington State
And here’s a related post about all those atheist hate-speak evildoers in Colorado that had the nerve to put up billboards that say “Don’t believe in God? You’re not alone.” The nerve!
Atheist billboards now up in Denver
Some pitiful footage of Bush getting snubbed by world leaders:
Bush at G20 economic summit meeting
And this is the result of that snubbing
And finally, the true meaning of Christmas and other Christmas info:
According to a Christian website called Christian Answers
According to a Jewish website called Simple to Remember
A reformed Christian lays out a long and well-written case for ignoring Christmas altogether
Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping and here’s a movie about his work called What Would Jesus Buy?
and HowStuffWorks lays out How Christmas Works
So, kids, here’s all I have to say about Christmas: spend time with your family. Don’t buy a bunch of gewgaws from China that will just end up in closets or drawers or landfills. Listen to some Christmas music. Look at the moon. Remember that on the darkest day of the year, December 21, that tomorrow, the darkness will fade a little sooner in the morning and that the daylight will come again. And try sipping on one of these. You won’t regret it.
|
The party is over
I just read a fantastic essay by Patrick J. Buchanan
titled “The Party is Over”. You can read it here.
As the credit party winds down, the drunk frat boys call cabs, and the haze starts to clear, one thing is clear: the house that our parents (and more importantly, our grandparents) left to us is covered with all the relics of a drunken party. Vomit, half-empties and broken consumer electronics are lying everywhere and there’s only one thing to do: get cleaning. Yeah, it kills your buzz. Sorry.
My dad went through a bankruptcy, and he said, “Jeremy, bankruptcy is the biggest blessing in disguise you can imagine, because it forces you to live within your means.” I now understand. EVeryone keeps asking, “What are we going to do, now that credit is drying up?!” It’s called, walk away from your upside-down mortgage and buy a house that was built 40 years ago, before everything got so goddamn big. The average house in 1945 was 800 sq. ft. The average house is now 2349 square feet. Food portions, vehicles and credit card balances have become huge, engorged pulsing boils that are just starting to burst, one by one, spreading pus and disease everywhere. Not pretty.
Two years ago I interviewed a former governor of Utah, Norm Bangerter. He was in the home-building business for 30 years before getting into politics. I asked him about what he thought of the housing boom that was going on at the time. He said, “I think it’s terrible. It’s terrible because 25-year-old kids are buying houses that their parents can’t afford. They’re building houses that are filled with luxury items, like granite countertops and marble bathrooms, and everyone thinks it’s normal. We have too many people spending way too much on their mortgage payments every month because they can’t imagine moving into a small, older home. They all want a brand-new house, a brand-new car and 5 TV’s. It’s not going to last, and I think we’re not teaching young people the right ideas about finances and expectations.”
The interview was for a homebuilder’s promotional DVD, so that part ended up on the cutting floor.
Look, kids. 75% of people kept their jobs during the Great Depression. 80% of people kept paying their mortgages. Yeah, things were tight. No more XBOX Live, no more NetFlix, cut back on the nail salon and on the gym membership (buy a weight set! or a kettlebell!) and maybe eat at home more often. Turn off cable or satellite. Trust me, you won’t die, and your kids will remember a childhood filled with laughter and books instead of it all being lost in a blur of American Idol and Hannah Montana. Why did your grandparents only need 800 sq. ft. for their family with five kids? Two reasons: they spent most of their time outside and kids shared rooms/beds. My grandpa told me that the five boys slept in one bed on the back porch until the oldest two were in their teens. Then they moved out to the barn.
My great grandpa bought one new pair of Levi’s per year, whether he needed them or not. Remember when there were shoe repair shops? Soles worn out? Take them to the shop. My grandpa said that when he got a new shirt, he wore it until he started getting holes in it. Then his mom would sew up those holes, and she had a whole jar full of buttons that she would use to replace lost buttons. Well, it got to where there was more patch than shirt, so he would put it in the rag bag. Once the rag bag filled up, his mom would make a quilt. He said those were handy, because when he woke up in the morning in January, there was a thin layer of frost across the top of his blanket, so he wanted as many of those quilts stacked up as he could find. There was one fireplace, in the kitchen, but it didn’t warm the rest of the house very well. Anyway, he’d use that blanket until it got holes and lost some of its filling. Then it would go out to the barn to be used as a saddle blanket. And eventually it would kind of just disappear, like a little bar of soap that you have to glue to another bar of soap to get a lather.
My grandpa told me that they didn’t have toilet paper: that’s what Montgomery Ward catalogs were for. The pages were printed on thin tissue paper, so you kept the catalog in the outhouse, read it while you were doing your thing, then tore off a page, crinkle, wipe, and get back to playing or working or whatever. My grandpa also told me that they only got pop (or soda or Coke or whatever they call it in your suburban cesspit) once a year, at the 4th of July picnic. He said they brought in big washtubs full of orange, strawberry, root beer, grape and raspberry pop. Nickel got you a pop, and a quarter got you a cheeseburger and a pop. They pulled ice out of the icehouses (ice that had been cut out in heavy blocks and carried to the icehouse in the winter from the river that ran through town) to keep the pop cold. He said he loved strawberry, and that he looked forward all year to that pop.
I know, I know. Nostalgia and all that bullshit, but here’s my point: we can do this. Our grandparents did it. My grandmother still saves money even though her monthly income is only $400 per month. And she doesn’t save it in a bank, btw. Not most of it. She said only a fool keeps all his money in one place. Bruce Lee said that most self-improvement programs don’t work because they require you to add things to your life, and people get overwhelmed. He said that if you really want to change your life, you should try removing things. The sudden disappearance of credit will now force us into that mindset, but I’m here to tell you that things might just get better, not worse. Turn off the t.v., tickle your kids and have a strawberry pop.
As the credit party winds down, the drunk frat boys call cabs, and the haze starts to clear, one thing is clear: the house that our parents (and more importantly, our grandparents) left to us is covered with all the relics of a drunken party. Vomit, half-empties and broken consumer electronics are lying everywhere and there’s only one thing to do: get cleaning. Yeah, it kills your buzz. Sorry.
My dad went through a bankruptcy, and he said, “Jeremy, bankruptcy is the biggest blessing in disguise you can imagine, because it forces you to live within your means.” I now understand. EVeryone keeps asking, “What are we going to do, now that credit is drying up?!” It’s called, walk away from your upside-down mortgage and buy a house that was built 40 years ago, before everything got so goddamn big. The average house in 1945 was 800 sq. ft. The average house is now 2349 square feet. Food portions, vehicles and credit card balances have become huge, engorged pulsing boils that are just starting to burst, one by one, spreading pus and disease everywhere. Not pretty.
Two years ago I interviewed a former governor of Utah, Norm Bangerter. He was in the home-building business for 30 years before getting into politics. I asked him about what he thought of the housing boom that was going on at the time. He said, “I think it’s terrible. It’s terrible because 25-year-old kids are buying houses that their parents can’t afford. They’re building houses that are filled with luxury items, like granite countertops and marble bathrooms, and everyone thinks it’s normal. We have too many people spending way too much on their mortgage payments every month because they can’t imagine moving into a small, older home. They all want a brand-new house, a brand-new car and 5 TV’s. It’s not going to last, and I think we’re not teaching young people the right ideas about finances and expectations.”
The interview was for a homebuilder’s promotional DVD, so that part ended up on the cutting floor.
Look, kids. 75% of people kept their jobs during the Great Depression. 80% of people kept paying their mortgages. Yeah, things were tight. No more XBOX Live, no more NetFlix, cut back on the nail salon and on the gym membership (buy a weight set! or a kettlebell!) and maybe eat at home more often. Turn off cable or satellite. Trust me, you won’t die, and your kids will remember a childhood filled with laughter and books instead of it all being lost in a blur of American Idol and Hannah Montana. Why did your grandparents only need 800 sq. ft. for their family with five kids? Two reasons: they spent most of their time outside and kids shared rooms/beds. My grandpa told me that the five boys slept in one bed on the back porch until the oldest two were in their teens. Then they moved out to the barn.
My great grandpa bought one new pair of Levi’s per year, whether he needed them or not. Remember when there were shoe repair shops? Soles worn out? Take them to the shop. My grandpa said that when he got a new shirt, he wore it until he started getting holes in it. Then his mom would sew up those holes, and she had a whole jar full of buttons that she would use to replace lost buttons. Well, it got to where there was more patch than shirt, so he would put it in the rag bag. Once the rag bag filled up, his mom would make a quilt. He said those were handy, because when he woke up in the morning in January, there was a thin layer of frost across the top of his blanket, so he wanted as many of those quilts stacked up as he could find. There was one fireplace, in the kitchen, but it didn’t warm the rest of the house very well. Anyway, he’d use that blanket until it got holes and lost some of its filling. Then it would go out to the barn to be used as a saddle blanket. And eventually it would kind of just disappear, like a little bar of soap that you have to glue to another bar of soap to get a lather.
My grandpa told me that they didn’t have toilet paper: that’s what Montgomery Ward catalogs were for. The pages were printed on thin tissue paper, so you kept the catalog in the outhouse, read it while you were doing your thing, then tore off a page, crinkle, wipe, and get back to playing or working or whatever. My grandpa also told me that they only got pop (or soda or Coke or whatever they call it in your suburban cesspit) once a year, at the 4th of July picnic. He said they brought in big washtubs full of orange, strawberry, root beer, grape and raspberry pop. Nickel got you a pop, and a quarter got you a cheeseburger and a pop. They pulled ice out of the icehouses (ice that had been cut out in heavy blocks and carried to the icehouse in the winter from the river that ran through town) to keep the pop cold. He said he loved strawberry, and that he looked forward all year to that pop.
I know, I know. Nostalgia and all that bullshit, but here’s my point: we can do this. Our grandparents did it. My grandmother still saves money even though her monthly income is only $400 per month. And she doesn’t save it in a bank, btw. Not most of it. She said only a fool keeps all his money in one place. Bruce Lee said that most self-improvement programs don’t work because they require you to add things to your life, and people get overwhelmed. He said that if you really want to change your life, you should try removing things. The sudden disappearance of credit will now force us into that mindset, but I’m here to tell you that things might just get better, not worse. Turn off the t.v., tickle your kids and have a strawberry pop.