Words to live by...
"How beautiful it is to do nothing, and to rest afterward."
[Spanish Proverb]
(The right to looseness has been officially given)
"Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders," wrote Ludwig von Mises, "no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interest, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle."
Apparently, the crossword puzzle that disappeared from the blog, came back.
As some of you may know, I "play" the stock market a tiny bit. I am not a Day Trader nor an options guy nor a major speculator. I am more like that mousy accountant from Sheboygan who doles out his $5 chips very carefully at the BlackJack table in Las Vegas. The accountant will spend all evening enjoying his free drinks and risking no more than a $100 in total. Once that's gone, he'll leave the table and go to bed.
Likewise, I have my limit. And I have my limits. I know them both very well. So I have, overall, gained a little more than I have lost. Mostly out of sheer luck. I am no Wall Street Wizard. I do not have the High Roller's bankroll. I also do not have the nerve to risk all that much. I get the shakes lining up a $1 putt.
The market is a funny thing. Though I rarely see anyone laughing about it. For the last couple of years, it has been bouncing up and down, like a puppy trying to get into your lap. When it finally does, it's so happy it pees on your pants.
People watch the Dow-Jones average and think that is the market. It isn't. Though the Average may be an indicator of overall activity trends, it represents only a tiny part of the market. I have had stocks (and funds) that have gone up nicely when the Average was heading down. Conversely, I have had holdings dropping like those birds in Arkansas and Louisiana while the Average is roaring up the mountainside.
There are people who make fortunes predicting market trends. They run all these calculations, examine "key indices", gather and analyze financial data, and tell their clients which sectors are healthy and strong and which aren't; which sectors will thrive and which will collapse. They are, in my mind, the modern day oracles, seers, and prophets. I don't trust them. Especially the ones who go on the TV financial shows. I rank them somewhere between used car salesmen and your run-of-the-mill con artists. Sincere though they may be, their field seems like astrology to me.
These are the guys who tell you why the market went through the roof or collapsed in a heap of smoldering ashes. And little of it ever made much sense to me. The market seems to be driven by a bit of mass insanity. A small incident sparks a rumor which travels through the brokerage houses like fire in a sawmill. The traders buy or sell depending upon the aura surrounding the rumor. It seems irrational to me.
While I was writing this, we got a phone call from the brokerage that administers my old company's 401K plan. Apparently, they'd like to get more activity going. Or maybe they were wondering if I had died. I haven't made a change in my 401K since... I don't recall when. I was still working. Somewhere between 2000 and 2004, I am sure. That was when I placed everything in a kind of Guaranteed Interest fund. It may not make much but it loses nothing (except to inflation). I was warned, of course, by a broker who thought I was nuts to do so. But, after the crashes and recessions of 2008, everything I had in 2003, I still have... plus some more.
Remember the Aesop fable, the Tortoise and the Hare? Throughout the last 10 years, I have followed the tortoise. I am not getting rich but I am not getting poor either. I am just getting older.
And isn't that the point at my age?
I'd like to write something light and witty today. Really I would. But I don't feel light and witty. I feel down and glum and foggy-brained. Don't know why, could be hormones or it could be genetic. They've recently identified what they think is a genetic marker for depression. And today I learn that baldness may be due to a defect, a flaw, in stem cells. Not that I am going bald, mind you. I am just destined to have very thinned out hair. I am reasonably sure that I inherited that trait from Mom. Dad passed away at age 84 with a full head of bushy "salt and pepper" (more salt than pepper) hair.
But mild depression runs in my family. So I have always suspected a genetic component. It isn't so much a bi-polar thing or deep depression, just a mild, lingering moroseness that pervades our lives. It is, no doubt, a factor in our curmudgeonly personalities. We are not a family of optimists... except on Mom's side. A real batch of Pollyannas on that side of the family. When you think about it, it is a surprise we don't have any bi-polar types running around.
Or maybe we do... moodiness is what we call it. One day up, a few days down is fairly common among us. But not so anyone would notice. I mean I have rarely spent the night painting my bedroom a bright red. Or wandering around babbling to myself. Well, other than on here. I do have mood swings, though, fairly wide ones. They seem normal to me.
I have nothing anyone might call "acute." I would categorize it as "mildly persistent." They don't treat that, you know. It has to be bad enough to attract attention. Attack someone or attempt suicide. The rest of the world just lives with it. We expect bad days, interspersed with good days. And we apologize for our behavior.
It also tends to mess up my golf game. Which is what really irks me.
I was perusing the various things I peruse in the mornings and finally clicked on the link in my email to Dave Barry's column in the Miami Herald. Dave is semi-retired, it seems. That is, most of the column links I am sent are for reprints of old (sometimes several years old) columns. On occasion, however, they are new and timely columns that are salient and insightful. Wait a minute, the older ones are always insightful. Just not always timely.
But I mentally wander...
The one I was sent the other day, on the third of January of this year (to be precise) is rather long. It is a not all that brief recap of the events of 2010. Dave, and others, do these recaps of the past year because they assume we all have case of Alzheimer's and have lost our short term memory capability. Which is not true, of course. I remember everything that happened last year. Except I have a little trouble recalling it clearly.
In any event, Dave (he lets me call him by his first name because he has no idea who I am and that I am doing it) provides us with a absurdist's view of the most interesting and/or important events of the last year. As if still nursing a hangover from your over-indulgence on New Year's Eve and facing another year of poor to non-existent economic recovery wasn't depressing enough. Of course, unlike me, Dave is entertaining and (most importantly) amusing. That would make the recap fun to read.
So, if you have a spare several minutes (it was a busy year) and you want to recall the year 2010 without a smile leaving your lips, I highly recommend following this link
Dave Barry’s 2010 Year in Review
How can anything that starts off like this be ignored?
"Let’s put things into perspective: 2010 was not the worst year ever. There have been MUCH worse years. For example, toward the end of the Cretaceous Period, the Earth was struck by an asteroid that wiped out 75 percent of all the species on the planet. Can we honestly say that we had a worse year than those species did? Yes we can, because they were not exposed to Jersey Shore."
This is the time of year for resolutions, I am told. Resolve to lose weight, resolve to be more kind, resolve to be more frugal (or less, depending on whatever you perceived yourself to be heretofore), resolve to quit smoking, resolve to spend more time with family and/or loved ones, and so on.
Pointless exercises, it seems since we all expect to break these solemn vows; it's merely a matter of when.
I gave up making resolutions many years ago. It is, perhaps, the only resolution I have ever kept for a year or more. I approach each new year in my life with the same fear and trepidation I have always felt entering the unknown. No resolution can overcome that, I suspect. I long ago found I could not keep a resolution to be optimistic. It is against my curmudgeonly nature. I would like to be optimistic but it would save me nothing in the long run. Being pessimistic at least allows me to prepare somewhat for life's unpleasantries.
I suppose I could make resolutions in keeping with my pessimism but wouldn't they be awful dreary?
Resolved: To be ready when the jack-booted thugs come to take my not "green" car away.
Resolved: to hoard enough gold so when the fall of civilization as we know it, I can still buy things.
Resolved: to collect enough guns and ammunition to fend off the marauders who will seek to steal my gold.
See what I mean? Very dreary. So I do none of the above but I don't feel bad because I never actually resolved to do any of them.
One day at a time, I say, and New Year's Day was just one more of them.
This being Saturday and all, I was looking for a reason to rant, political style, and came across this:
Scott Sisters Kidney Donation Threatens Organ Transplant Laws [Read here]
If you don't know the story, it goes like this... about 17 years ago, two young sisters were arrested for their part in an armed robbery netting a grand total of $11. Per the NYT-
"The Scotts were arrested on Christmas Eve 1993 and convicted the next year of leading two men into an ambush during which the men were robbed of about $11, according to the trial transcript.
The sisters’ accomplices, three boys ages 14 to 18, have served their sentences and were released from custody for the crime years ago, Mississippi officials said. The sisters have denied playing any role in the crime. "
[Full story here]
Well, fast forward to 2009 when the sisters petitioned for early release (they were due to have parole reviewed in 2014) so that the healthy sister could donate her kidney to the younger sister. It apparently took some time for this to reach the desk of Haley Barbour, governor of Mississippi, who has signed an order commuting the sentences but carrying the proviso that the organ must be donated.
Heart-warming? A real human interest story? Well, yes, it started out that way. A gracious governor granting clemency to loving sisters who appeared to have been given unjust sentences with a an organ donor twist. Just tugs at the old heartstrings, does it not? Well, that was how the initial stories went. Then the tone of the story, and the emphasis, has changed.
Now it's all about transplant ethics.
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. After all, Barbour is being touted as a possible Republican candidate for president. The odds against him making even a a moderately successful run at the nomination are slim to none but that doesn't seem to matter. I doubt that Barbour wasn't looking at the political considerations of his commuting their sentences, don't get me wrong. I just think it had more to do with the flak he was receiving over prior comments about how he didn't recall the racial animosity in his hometown in 1955 as being all that bad and not about any presidential aspirations. Not only would he do some good for Mississippi's Corrections Department (removing their liability for the transplant costs, though it would likely just shift to Medicaid), for the sisters, and for (presumably) his own image. It seemed like a win-win situation.
I am nothing if not pragmatic. If the motives are selfish but the end result is all good, seems ok to me.
I would think that some people who are questioning the ethics of the commutation deal ought to look at the ethics of those questioning it. Why is the ethics issue coming up in this fashion? Why now, rather than in January of 2009 when the sisters petitioned for early release and brought up the transplant deal as a bargaining chip?
I think I know why.
