Don't Look Now, Here Comes Inflation...

A headline on the BBC today read: World food prices at fresh high, says UN

This can’t be so. After all, if our Expert Central Bankers are fighting deflation, how can inflation be a problem? (For those of you who do not know me too well, I am being sarcastic.)

I love that the UN attributes the problems to the weather and that the BBC perpetuates this notion. The truth is all famines are political.

So what are we really seeing? When Central Banks print money, the first to be hurt are always the world’s poorest. Inflation starts at the bottom and works it’s way up. Trillions upon trillions of “new” fiat currency is working it’s way into markets thanks to our numerous “stimulus” packages. And when you have more and more money chasing resources, the resources seem more “scarce” than they really are.

Think of it this way. There are three guys stranded on an island. One has a dollar. One has a five dollar bill. One has a spare Big Mac in his back pocket he is willing to sell. How much does he sell that extra Big Mac for? Obviously, he would sell it to the guy with the five.

Now what happens if the guy with the dollar discovers he has a one hundred dollar bill he forgot about. How much does that Big Mac sell for now? Obviously, now that he can out-bid the guy with the five, that Big Mac is not going to get purchased for anything less than that.

In this example, the Big Mac didn’t change, money did. And although scarcity matters, most people do not see the role money plays. Yet, fiat currency is the key ingredient when creating inflation stew.

And a nice big batch of inflation stew has been brewing.

Today, the simpletons in the media continue to report that rising food prices are due to floods in Australia, as if there are not floods somewhere every year. Tomorrow, they will report that rising energy prices are due to restrictions in the Middle East, as if there has not been chaos there for decades.

The truth is not that complicated, but we ignore it, or worse, we buy into the “official” story.

Just remember, with what our Central Bankers have done -- and regardless of how it is presented -- inflation is coming. Let’s just hope it is not the “hyper” variety.

Jim Rogers, Adventure Capitalist

I am currently reading Adventure Capitalist, by Jim Rogers, a favorite investment guru of mine. Traveling around the world in a modified Benz in 2003, Jim Rogers describes his journey through the lens of someone seeking environments conducive to free exchange. In other words, the more free a location is of government and/or military coercion, the more desirable it is as a potential investment opportunity. His perceptions on cultures and governments are eye-opening.

...and I am only sixty or so pages into it.

So far, they have entirely covered Europe. They have spent time listening to the Grateful Dead while cruising down one of the world’s best highways in Turkey -- an American made artifact from the Cold War. They have had dinner with American ex-pats in Central Asia -- men incapable of making it on Wall Street during the booming nineties who now have cushy government jobs touting the world about "American capitalism”. From there, they went on to deal with the uninviting mafia-type culture of the “new” Russia and viewed the repercussions of seventy years of Soviet central planning. The ecological disaster that once was the Aral Sea may take another seven thousand to heal. Once a source of an eighth of all fish in the Soviet Union, it now supports no life, drained dry by Soviet-built dams. Jim also describes being the first human being to drive across China three times. (Rogers wrote about an earlier travel in another book Investment Biker.) The incredible changes that have occurred in the short time between his trips are astonishing.

The interesting thing about travel is that our preconceived notions are almost always different than our perceptions once we have actually been there. Unlike most travelogues, I have found his perceptions of Asia to be very similar to those I have from my trips there, so I look forward to his views on the rest of the world.

Like I said, I have just begun this great read. If you like adventure, travel and a unique perspective, this is great stuff. I am guessing I will be elaborating on it more in the future.

One Trillion Dollars (Times Fourteen)

Yes, I talk about debt too much. Maybe I am obsessed -- after all, I do have a widget displaying our national debt on this very page -- but eventually, a day will come when even our government will no longer be able to ignore it.

According to this from the BBC, a presidential panel set up to help trim the US budget deficit is finally calling for steep spending cuts and tax rises. Unlikely to happen of course, but at least the elephant in the room is no longer being ignored.

The article shares a great quote from Honeywell CEO Dave Cote's US Chamber of Commerce speech last month. Here is an extended version:

And how much is a trillion dollars? How do we put that into perspective? We work with millions and billions... but how to explain a trillion dollars to someone and how much that is? This is the best way I have found to get across the enormity of a trillion dollars. If you had spent a million dollars a day, every day, since Jesus Christ was born 2010 years ago, you would still not have spent a trillion dollars. And by 2021, that will be our annual interest bill alone!

There are only three ways to get out of debt: 1) Do the right thing and pay it back; 2) Be ethical, admit you are over-extended, default and declare bankruptcy, or 3) Cheat your debt holders, counterfeit currency and pay back your debts in worthless notes.

Only two of the above choices are ethical and legal, but which one do you think our government will choose?

Thoughts on Bill Gates and His Money

I am an Apple guy, but even I can recognize Bill Gates’ real contribution to society. He, along with others, took a technology only affordable to the richest of companies and helped make it accessible to ordinary individuals. The world’s obsession with the wealth Bill Gates has accumulated from this is even more interesting than his actual story. Not that his story is boring. (In fact, if you have Netflix, check out Triumph of the Nerds, a dated, but fascinating three part 1996 PBS series that chronicles the start of the personal computer business.) But more importantly, how we view his wealth says as much about ourselves as it does him.

First, there is the question of whether he deserves it. The genius of Bill Gates is that he started a multi-multi-billion dollar company based off a software he didn’t even create. He purchased it for around $75,000. What made Bill Gates was his vision, taking the creation of others and repackaging and re-purposing it to fill a need, albeit a far greater need than even he envisioned. Ideas are what create wealth, but even ideas are only ideas until they are actually implemented. The man who created that software had no idea how big his creation could possibly be. Fortunately, Bill Gates did. Therefore, his wealth is proportional to the things he created, the foundation of an entire industry.

The second thing I find interesting about his wealth is how everyone seems to have an opinion about it. When average Americans look at someone who is better off than themselves they seem quick to talk about economic “fairness”. But the fact that Bill Gates has more money than any one man could ever possibly need does not give anyone the right to think they should have access to it or any kind of authority in redistributing it.

I am reminded of a conversation I once had with my Chinese friend Vincent, who questioned American “greed”. When the average Chinese gets by fine with an annual income of around $3,000, why would any American need to make more than $30,000 a year? After all, he mused, any more than that just means you are filthy stinking rich. It is all a matter of perspective, I guess. Either way, Vincent or anyone else has no more right to my “excess income” any more than I or anyone else has to Bill Gates’.

We spend too much time worrying about what other people have. In fact, it makes us miss the forest for the trees. As Economist Donald J. Boudreaux has aptly pointed out, if a time traveler from the 1700’s were to visit the Gates’ household today, he would marvel at the same things you and I share in common with Gates:

...a good guess is that the features of Gates's life that would make the deepest impression are that he and his family never worry about starving to death; that they bathe daily; that they have several changes of clean clothes; that they have clean and healthy teeth; that diseases such as smallpox, polio, diphtheria, tuberculosis, tetanus, and pertussis present no substantial risks; that Melinda Gates’s chances of dying during childbirth are about one-sixtieth what they would have been in 1700; that each child born to the Gateses is about 40 times more likely than a pre-industrial child to survive infancy; that the Gateses have a household refrigerator and freezer (not to mention microwave oven, dishwasher, and radios and televisions); that the Gateses’s work week is only five days and that the family takes several weeks of vacation each year; that each of the Gates children will receive more than a decade of formal schooling; that the Gateses routinely travel through the air to distant lands in a matter of hours; that they effortlessly converse with people miles or oceans away; that they frequently enjoy the world’s greatest actors’ and actresses’ stunning performances; that the Gateses can, whenever and wherever they please, listen to a Beethoven piano sonata, a Puccini opera, or a Frank Sinatra ballad.

In short, what would likely most impress a visitor from the past about Bill Gates’s life are precisely those modern advantages that are not unique to Bill Gates–advantages now enjoyed by nearly all Americans.

Again, how we view wealth is all a matter of perspective.

Now having said that, like everyone else, I also have an opinion about how he should spend his wealth. I would never seriously question the merits of The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation -- because, as I pointed out, it is their money to do with as they wish. On the other hand, while many people look on with admiration at their great philanthropy, I do have to wonder, is this the best application of their wealth?

Bill Gates is one of the greatest capitalists that has ever lived. He helped create a product that didn’t exist a generation ago, one that many today could not imagine living without. In doing so, he has played a large part in the creation of millions of jobs, made hundreds of thousands of people wealthy, and increased the production of our entire society. No matter how many billions he may give away in his lifetime, this will always be his greatest contribution. The most philanthropic thing Bill Gates could do with his wealth would be to continue doing what he does best by staying in the business world and creating more wealth.

From Shanghai to Karlstad (Minnesota, that is)

While visiting Shanghai a few years ago, I had a conversation with a Chinese tour guide. He asked me what I did for a living and I explained how I touched up pictures all day that went into magazines. He didn’t quite get it until we happened to drive by the Ritz Carlton. Then I proudly explained how my name was in every room of that hotel, more precisely, in the publishing credits at the front of every Ritz Carlton in-room magazine. We had a good chuckle about how I am almost famous.

Playing in Photoshop is a wonderful way to make a living. But processing thoughts and writing them down is my mental release. It is not the act of writing I like. After all, my spelling sucks, my grammar sucks, and my sentence structure often makes no sense. It is the process of condensing my thoughts into words that I love. I do pictures for a living, but writing is my hobby. That is why I do this blog. Although few people read it, that is not the point. Writing is an exercise to give voice to those crazy thoughts that occasionally wake me up at three in the morning. They say people who don’t dream will eventually go crazy, that dreams are a way for our minds to purge all the nonsense swimming around in our brains. Well, I guess that is how writing thoughts into words works for me. It keeps me from going crazy.

So last week when my brother Bubba felt it worthy to use my post-election blog post in his weekly newspaper column, it reminded me of my conversation with my driver in Shanghai. I may have my name in the publishing credits of every in-room magazine in every Ritz Carlton in every major city on this planet, but seeing my words in a small weekly newspaper in northern Minnesota was every bit as thrilling. Thanks Bubba.

What Voters Want Voters Never Get

There was a somewhat insightful opinion post on the Baltimore Sun site after the election that I gleaned from a friend on Facebook. In it, the author accurately points out the unrealistic expectations of what we expect our government to provide us.

An excerpt:

After devoting long minutes to careful analysis of Tuesday night's election returns, I now know what Americans want:

We want roads and bridges that are always in good condition but do not require tax money for upkeep.

We want world class schools with teachers who are so dedicated that they will work for minimum wage. (Note: the best one should be in my neighborhood)

We want 60-inch plasma TVs that cost $200 and are produced by workers in Ohio making at least $30 per hour.

We want our military to win every war, every heart and every mind, everywhere, at no cost in lives or money.

He then goes on to site another half dozen or so similar points. Curiously, there is an obvious topic missing: healthcare. No where does he mention something about how we want world-class healthcare and we want it for free. Ask an American how much he spent on his flat screen and he will gladly brag about it. Yet that same soul will complain to no end if he has to spend a dime of his own money on his own well-being.

...but I digress.

I give kudos to the author for recognizing how out of whack our expectations are of what government can "provide". Yet he seems to ignore the possibility that maybe government shouldn't be providing any of these things.

Americans have lost the realization that our government was not created to "provide" for us. It was created to protect us so that we may actively pursue providing for ourselves. Instead, we have been conditioned to believe that our right to vote gives us license to steal from each other, ignoring that no matter how just we see the cause we vote for, stealing is still stealing. We take turns at the government trough, thinking that a 51% majority gives us the right to steal from the other 49%. We look to government to "provide" us all our wants and needs, then get mad at "the other side" when they do the same thing.

It brings to mind the old quote,

"Democracy is nothing more than two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner."

And although I can agree with Mr. Nachlas when he says:

Personally, I want leaders who will tell us frankly that all these things are not possible, that the blessings of infrastructure and education given us by our fathers are wearing out.[...]I want leaders who will tell the truth: that there is no free lunch.

I have to respectfully disagree when he says:

I want thinkers who can paint a picture of a greater America that could exist in 50 or 100 years, and then unite us with a roadmap to get there. I want America to have a shared vision and an understanding that we all benefit when we all contribute, and that we all suffer when we demand only for ourselves.

The simplistic notion that we can elect "thinkers" who can plan our future is exactly what got us here in the first place.

Let's do a quick thought exercise. Think back one hundred years -- no let's just do fifty -- say 1960. What "thinker" could have painted the world we live in now? I cannot even begin to touch on the millions of social changes, innovations and conflicts that have complicated our world since 1960. Who then would have accurately envisioned the wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, the attacks of 9/11 and how that completely changed our world view, the rise of the personal computer, smart phones, the Internet, Google, Intel chips, flat screen TVs, Oprah? No one.

Our world is too complicated to be centrally planned. When we expect our government to "deliver all these things", we can only expect -- no, do I dare say -- we only deserve what we get.

When we expect the government to "provide" for us, we get stupid things like governments declaring Happy Meals are illegal. Then we are surprised when our elected officials think they have the right to decide who can marry who, or what consenting adults can do, or what plants people can cultivate. Indeed, the list of their involvement in our lives becomes endless. And we give it to them every time we vote for them to "provide" for us. As Americans we used to be productive, innovative, independent. Now we have become a nation of leeches taking turns sucking off the government teet.

Again, I end with a quote from the great French "thinker" Frederic Bastiat:

"Men naturally rebel against the injustice of which they are victims. Thus, when plunder is organized by law for the profit of those who make the law, all the plundered classes try somehow to enter -- by peaceful or revolutionary means -- into the making of laws. According to their degree of enlightenment, these plundered classes may propose one of two entirely different purposes when they attempt to attain political power: Either they may wish to stop lawful plunder, or they may wish to share in it."

We have obviously chosen to share in it.

I want America to have a shared vision and an understanding that we all benefit when we all take responsibility for ourselves and stop trying to use the voting box as a way to enrich ourselves. We need to stop participating in legal plunder. Until then, we all suffer when one side wins an election -- and it doesn't matter which side that is.

The BCS vs A Playoff System

This has been a crazy year for college football. According to a great blog by ESPN’s Ivan Maisel, since the inception of the BCS in 1998 only twelve teams have played in the twelve BCS Championship games. Of those twelve games, four SEC teams have gone undefeated, winning half of them.

Oh, how things have changed. As of today, none of those teams are in the top five. According to Maisel, it ain’t looking good for the traditional power houses. “In the era of the BCS Championship Game, only three teams have climbed from outside the top five 10 weeks into the season and into the final game. All three are SEC teams -- No. 8 Florida in 2008, No. 7 Florida in 2006 and No. 9 LSU in 2003 -- and all three won the championship.”

With only one SEC team in the top 10 (#10 LSU), it looks like things are going to wrap up differently this year. Is the world really ready for a Championship game potentially containing the Horned Frogs, the Utes, or the Broncos?

I can already hear the annual lament starting: when will the BCS be scrapped and a playoff system installed? I am with them. The BCS bowl sites could still be used for the final rounds, eliminating their financial worries. And teams that don’t make the playoffs could still play in traditional bowl games. With a sixteen team, five week playoff system, the season would still be virtually the same length, ending somewhere in mid January. And, most importantly, the Championship would be decided on the field, not by computer or some voter’s whim.

It would be more exciting, more revenue generating, and down-right logical. Oops. Logical. That’s why it will never happen...