November 29, 2008

I get several complaints when I threaten to leave 360, from loyal readers who have grown accustomed to my...warped perspective?

Economy

In September i wrote about talking with honey and deciding to move at least some of the IRA money from stocks to money market...and then within weeks looking like I was amazingly smart. (If I had been smart I wouldn't now be planning to work several more years to recover). If I was so smart, i would have concluded like many economists have that the current US mortgages secured by our quasi-government financial market is in the neighborhood of $10 trillion (10 thousand billion) and the estimated market value of those is $1-2 trillion...OOPS! So meanwhile people like me have seen their house value quadruple in the last decade, and then come tumbling down, to something like 20% over what we paid in 1997...gee, where did all that money go?

National Security

And pretty much the economy has ruled our lives, until the day before Thanksgiving when a bunch of assholes decided to start a terrorist fun fest in India by killing innocent men women and children. Watching the news, I saw what appeared to me to be rather poorly trained police, no doubt terrified themselves, trying to figure out what to do. I actually remember seeing the news the next day when some serious looking men in uniform marched past the cameras, and thought"they seem to know what they are doing". Having been around the military and/or police much of my adult life, you can see in how people carry themselves whether they have confidence and an air of knowing what they are doing, a sense of professionalism I guess. At any rate, it seems the terrorists have been killed, arrested, or got away (my bet)...how is it that Friday the media reported Indian Security services were fairly certain there had been between 20-25 attackers involved, and today it a confirmed there were only 10??? 10 sites attacked by 10 guys??? and 6 were killed in one hotel??

And according to former General Colin Powell and Vice President Biden we will have a generated international crisis between January 20 2009 and the six month mark to test the new administration...spoken with such confidence that its no wonder many of my friends are spooked...