Past Midway

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Losing Our Childhood

When I was little, I had an assortment of plastic toy animals – farm animals, a few dinosaurs, a giraffe, an elephant, and some others odd characters… the usual gang of creatures a young child might enjoy. And I did. This motley crew became the bedrock of an imaginary world that could occupy my mind and engross me in solitary play for extended periods. I don’t recall the various adventures my...

Deficits, Debt, Interest, Taxes, Austerity, Waste, Inflation and The Fed

Numerous threats encompass a nation and a national psyche – some real, some existential, some external, some internal. In this post, I discuss a real internal threat, one of our own creation, completely under our control, but not under control – our national debt. Our nation’s enormous debt and persistent deficit spending significantly constrain our future economic options and form the...

What Game Are We Playing?

“Should I go for 3-of-a-kind or the full-house?” I thought aloud. I was home from college for Christmas break. Between semesters. Final exams behind me. Eight family members gathered around the kitchen table to play Yahtzee (the dice game) at my grandparents’ house. I sat on the end of the table, closest to the door. To me, Yahtzee was an exercise in statistical probabilities mixed with pure...

My Key Takeaways from Reading the Federal Budget

Citizens often complain about taxes and government waste. If we suspected less of the latter, there might be less of the former. Yeah, maybe not. Anyway, in thinking about this, it occurred to me that while I have read summaries and commentaries on the U.S. Federal Budget, I had never read the Budget itself – the actual source document. To develop a more informed view, I read the Federal Budget...

A Framework to Help Develop Your Criteria for a Spouse

This blog post has a purpose – to prompt young people to reflect on the qualities they aspire to find in a prospective life partner before they become entangled in love and feel they have found their future spouse. More than a decade ago, I meandered into an airport bookstore in Stockholm and, on a whim, purchased a book for my transatlantic flight. The book was titled Too Soon Old, Too Late...

The Imminent Transformation: How AI Will Revolutionize Industries and Reshape the Workforce

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is all the buzz lately, and rightly so. I suspect it’s a bigger deal than you think. AI isn’t just some fringe, hypothetical Star Trek tech for geeks and nerds to drool over. Not any longer. Prediction – AI technology will creep into every facet of modern culture and will completely transform vast industries such that we will not recognize them in 10 years, perhaps 5...

Inflation and Where I Think It’s Going

I bought a 50 lbs. bag of rice at Sam’s six months ago for $20. I know, that’s a lot of rice. But it was cheap! This week, I was shopping at Sam’s again and saw the same rice product, priced at $26 per bag. That’s 30% inflation over 6 months! How does this square with the reported 12-month Consumer Price Index inflation rate of 6.0% (9.5% for food)? See chart below. I discussed this, in part, in...

Physics and Life

I needed to test a new microphone. So, just to have something to say for the audio test, I began discussing potential & kinetic energy as a analogy to life… a thought I have been contemplating for more than a decade. I expected the idea would eventually be a written blog post, but I thought the initial rambling in the video was decent, so I just kept talking… for nearly 10 minutes. A...

Gold. Lots of Gold.

The U.S. Treasury (plus the Fed) holds a lot of gold. I was curious about this, so I looked into it… so you don’t have to. How Much is a Lot? The U.S. Treasury currently holds 261 million Fine Troy Ounces of Gold (261,498,926 to be exact). The book value for this gold is recorded as $11 billion. If you’re not familiar with accounting, book value is NOT market value. Dividing $11 billion by the...

My Father’s Eulogy

It is a strange thing to miss your own father’s funeral. Today is the second anniversary of my father’s death. He passed away while my family and I were in transit to visit family in Sweden. Mom waited until we had completed our first flight and were about to board our trans-Atlantic flight before telling me that Dad was nearing the end. Mom knew I would have stayed, had I known, and she wanted...

Why Inflation Feels Like It’s More Than Reported

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) came out for May 2022, showing 8.6% inflation over May 2021. “Experts” claimed this was higher than expected. For the rest of us, inflation feels higher than 8.6%, when we visit the grocery store, go to lunch, or fill up at the pump. In fact, it’s difficult to name a product we regularly purchase that’s ONLY up 8.6%. So, where’s the disconnect between what leaves...

Playing to Win

The kids and I used to wrestle on the living room floor when they were younger – when I was younger. All three were afforded the same wrestling opportunities, but Soren (my son) seemed to enjoy it more than his sisters. Boys sometimes have extra physical energy demanding an outlet. Because Soren was smaller than me, I wrestled with him down on my hands and knees. This enabled Soren to develop his...

Social Security Status

Although Covid, money printing, inflation, and geopolitical complexities dominate the media and our collective conversation, we seem to have lost focus on the Social Security Program. Why? Because it’s boring, in comparison. Nevertheless, a Social Security implosion looms on the near horizon. Consequently, I thought we should resurface this conversation, between panics. The main problem, Social...

Precious Time

Years ago, I was on the phone with a customer. During the conversation, we spoke briefly about our families, as sometimes happens, especially with long-term customers. “Do you have kids?” he asked. “I do. Three,” I replied. “How old are they?” “10, 7 & 4… girl, girl, boy.” “I remember when my son was four…,” his sentence trailed off as he began to reminisce of things that once were. Nostalgic...

Mistletoe

In November 2004, my wife (Sofie) and I were driving back to Austin after visiting family for the Thanksgiving holidays in Oklahoma. “You can really see all the mistletoe, now the leaves have fallen,” Sofie commented from the passenger seat, looking around and basically chilling out because, well, she wasn’t driving. “Maybe we should sell it online,” she continued, knowing the tradition of being...

More Than a Book

When we say an object is in the same place it was before, we mean, it hasn’t moved relative to some other things, but it is definitely not in the same exact place. In fact, nothing is ever in the same place it once was, including you. For Example, Let’s Find My Book Suppose I ask my lovely wife (Sofie), “Have you seen my book?” A seemingly simple question, to which she might reply, “It’s on the...

Dislocated Jaw

I play a pick-up soccer game with the neighborhood guys a few days per week. It’s one of my favorite activities and helps keep me in shape. A few months back, I kicked the ball to make a pass, but the ball ricocheted off another player’s knee and smacked me square on the chin. You might say I kicked the soccer ball into my own face. After a few seconds of brain fog, I recovered and continued to...

The Expanding Federal Reserve – Part 3

This is Part 3, the final part, in my series on the Fed. Review In Part 1, we discussed the Fed’s massive financial intervention into the mortgage-backed security market during the 2008+ recession. During this time, the Fed pumped ~22% of a single-year’s GDP into the market, spread across six years. Keep this figure in the back of your mind because we’ll revisit this enormous, unprecedented slug...

The Expanding Federal Reserve – Part 2

This is Part 2 of my three-part series on the Federal Reserve. Review In Part 1, I discussed the Fed’s massive financial intervention into the mortgage-backed security market during the last recession (2008+). This event provides a good benchmark to compare subsequent Fed interventions, notably 2020. I also analyzed the outcomes of the Fed’s mortgage-backed security purchases. Although I expected...

Past Midway Ramblings on Business & Life

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