More than a book on personal finance and budgeting, it is a collection of our personal finance tips told through a bakery metaphor. It is now available and can be enjoyed with a coffee and danish on Smashwords, Amazon’s Kindle, and Google Books.
As an added bonus for visiting our page here at The Mint, you can download a sample budget spreadsheet in Excel format to help you to implement some of the tips here:
dough-/dō/- noun -1. A thick, malleable mixture of flour and liquid, used for baking into bread or pastry. 2. Money: “lots of dough”.
Dough. Unless you work in a bakery or pizza parlor, you probably can’t get enough of it. As we began to elaborate this current volume, which, at its base, is a presentation of our unconventional budget tips, we knew that it would be necessary to employ a metaphor to keep fellow bakers, who have any number of demands upon their time beyond budgeting, or seeking out metaphors, for that matter, engaged long enough to revolutionize their approach to money, which in turn will give them time to knead dough, ponder metaphors, compose run on sentences, or indulge any number of whims which may be germinating in the dark recesses of their minds at this very moment.
Budgeting Healthy Habits: How to get the Dough you Knead
Most of the human race spends the better part of their waking moments either doing something or wondering what they should be doing. Human action is an ultimate given, and, as the band Rush reminds us in their early 80′s smash, Freewill,
“If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”
The choices available to most of us are limited to the amount of dough that we have available or lack at any given moment. This goal of this volume is to equip you, fellow baker, to dominate your dough situation and bake the loaves, pastries, or crusts in the style and quantities necessary to satiate your desires. If we are fortunate, this volume will convince you that the key to happiness is in helping others, however, this is a hypothesis that must be proved by personal experience, and is not the central theme.
The central theme is dough, more precisely, how to manage your dough. If you have been searching for information on budgeting and personal finance for any amount of time, we don’t have to tell you that there is an exhaustive amount of material available, and finding good advice that fits your situation, is can be as rare as finding a butcher, baker, and candlestick maker together these days.
With this in mind, we present these healthy habits as morsels on a platter. You may choose to scarf them down in one sitting, which will undoubtedly shock your organism into convulsions, or you can take them in, one at a time, savoring each one while giving your organism adequate time to digest it, maintaining the nutrients and eliminating the waste through the proper channels.
The organism we speak of is your personal or family economy, which in this volume we refer to as the bakery, for all of us are cooking up one thing or another. We recommend that you treat your bakery with the utmost of care. This volume is designed to give you the tools to do just that. If properly used in just the right proportions, these tips will help to ensure that everything you cook up will come out just right.
As the clock ticks down once again on another fiscal deadline, it would appear that the US and global economy are in for a brief bout with a familiar friend, uncertainty. In the face of uncertainty, it is important to review one’s basic premises to be assured that they still hold. Here at The Mint, we perform this analysis by way of presenting a list of Key Indicators at the end of each segment.
Most days, it hardly seems worth doing. The data we track tends to stay in a fairly tight range. However, were one to read The Mint say, two months ago, there may be a noticeable difference in the data points which would tell us something. That something, for the past two years, has been that come what may, be it TARP, Debt ceiling votes, Euro zone crises, Fiscal Cliffs, or the latest version, the Sequester, our key indicators have consistently returned one answer as to what lies beyond the speed bump: Inflation.
However, the drama that unfolds in the lead up to what can only be described as a failure to properly sends jitters through the most vulnerable parts of the financial markets, which circa 2013 are literally all financial assets. The jitters are caused by a Pavlovian reflex that the markets have ingrained in their psyche at the hint of the POMO (the Fed’s Permanent Open Market Operations) running dry.
The POMO, for the initiated, is where the magic of QE and other monetary alchemy takes place. It is where the FED exchanges wine for sewage, and it is increasingly difficult to say who is providing what. In the end, it will all turn to sewage, and the end is always nigh, hence the Pavlovian response.
To illustrate the point, we offer an incident from our youth as an example of how the Pavlovian response of market exits (or risk off trading) works. Though no animals were injured in the incident that follows, if you are a member or PETA or are sensitive to animal cruelty, you may want to jump below the graphic to continue reading.
When we were a young boy in Colorado, we had a dog that we would come to call the Rock long before an aspiring professional wrestler adopted the nickname and made it famous.
The Rock was an extremely lively dog and, while fun to be around and play with, he, like all young pups, wanted to get out and see the world. To accomplish this goal, The Rock would dig holes under the fence and wriggle through them. More often than not, the family would spend the better part of the afternoon patrolling the neighborhood in search of our four legged explorer.
Our Uncle, who lives in Nebraska and is a farmer turned banker, but was a farmer at the time, offered some advice on the matter. As most people are aware, cattle and other livestock can be coaxed into staying in an enclosed area by running an electrified wire around the perimeter. The trick is that the perimeter fence does not need to be live for the livestock in question to respect it as a boundary.
The reason for this is that the livestock are trained to have a Pavlovian response to the mere sight of the wire. When the fence is installed or new livestock are moved to the enclosure, the wire is turned on and the electric current runs through the wire. The initiated livestock stay clear of the wire and search for a good view as the new livestock, who are unaware of the fence’s magic powers, bump into the wire unaware and are promptly shocked, or as the farmer thinks of it, “conditioned,” to stay away from the wire.
We now return to The Rock. Our Uncle, after hearing of our plight, offered to lend us one of the electric wire fences so that The Rock could be trained to stay within his confines.
We set up the fence. The Rock watched the installation with interest. We put the final length in place and then turned to The Rock for what we imagined would be a brief round of “conditioning.”
We stared by placing his paw upon the live wire. There was no Pavlovian response on the Rock’s part, just the usual excited stare and panting. Next, we tried the top of his foot, which was covered in hair. Again, nothing.
We quickly touched the wire ourselves and satisfied ourselves that it had been turned on. How could we get The Rock to understand that the wire was a force to be reckoned with?
Again, readers with PETA affiliations, if they have read to this point are encouraged to jump to the graphic. This is the final warning.
It began to dawn on us that the reason that The Rock had avoided the shock to this point was that there was no moisture on his paw or hair (it was a fine summer day in an arid climate, after all). All that was needed to get the current running was a bit of moisture.
It did not occur to us to grab a spray bottle to lightly moisten the dog and retry the relatively innate area of the paw that we had focused on up to that point. What did occur to us was to grab a piece of raw meat and hang it over the wire.
What happened next remains permanently etched in the memory of all who witnessed it.
The Rock, delighted at the offering, immediately extended his tongue to retrieve the meat from the wire, the way he would have any food morsel that he was offered. Naturally, he was shocked as his tongue made solid contact with the wire.
The Rock did not retreat at that point, rather, between yelps of both pain and pleasure, continued what was a vain attempt to remove the meat from its perch.
After about the third attempt, a shock of sufficient strength was delivered by the fence and The Rock abruptly turned and ran 180 degrees into the house. We were standing at the door in disbelief as The Rock hit cheetah type speeds as he encountered us at the door.
We do not remember exactly how we ended up on our back, but we suspect we completed at least one full, albeit involuntary, rotation in the air before we arrived there.
In the background we heard uncontrollable laughter, and The Rock didn’t leave his hiding place under the bed for the rest of the day.
Strangely, the incident did not change The Rock’s attitude towards digging under the fence, and he managed to escape whether or not the electrical perimeter wire was on or off.
The Pavlovian response, which was so evident in his cheetah like retreat that day, had been completely forgotten. It wasn’t until he was hit by a car and had his hip shattered some time later that He finally gave up carousing.
We take a brief break from our tale to welcome back PETA members and animal sympathizers and to provide the following graphic, which was created by Wells Fargo’s Mark Vittner and Michael Brown and comes to us via the Money Game. The graphic looks at which states stand to lose the most income, on a relative basis, should the Sequester become a reality. By extension, it shows which is most dependent on Federal government spending. Not surprisingly, the noise attributed to the Sequester threat comes from the fact that those populations most affected on a relative basis reside near Washington DC.
Federal Spending as percentage of GDP by State via Business Insider’s The Money Game
Those closest to Rome are the ones who will get scorched as it burns. However, thanks to the Fiscal fire hoses provided by the POMO of the FED, the Sequester will barely register as a spark
So it is with government finances when the monetary premium is removed from goods in the natural realm. The above mentioned TARP, Debt ceiling votes, Euro zone crises, Fiscal Cliffs have proved to be nothing more than the meat hanging on the electrified wire for the governments of the west. The latest version, known as the Sequester, which is essentially the spawn of the August 2010 debt ceiling debacle, is simply more meat on the wire.
Traders will yelp and make a dramatic retreat, and then return to digging under the fence the next day. They will continue to roam farther and farther afield until they are hit by a car, which will come when the FED is the only customer for US Treasury debt, and the incestuous feedback look of the money supply overlords and government debt and spending collapses upon itself.
At that point, analysis will be useless, as the entire system upon which present analytical tools base their assumptions will cease to exist.
While the moronic Sequester is important for doctors and those who make armaments for a living, (many of whom live very close to Washington DC, making for a vocal and visible constituency that will be impacted) it is meaningless, both in terms of reigning in government spending or slowing down, let alone stopping, the t
It has been an exciting couple of days in the financial markets. We almost can’t bear to watch. From what little we can tell, the out-sized effects of short-term funds, which are jittery in nature, are determined to drive anyone who is taking a long view on the market mad.
Most of what passes as equity investing today is done with short-term funding provided by the Federal Reserve. No matter how much propaganda the Fed puts out promising to maintain their QE programs in full force or keep the pedal to the metal on ZIRP, it is an inescapable fact that funds at many of the Primary Dealers are short-term and can be pulled by the Fed on a whim.
Lately, between the sequester threat and the Federal Reserve meeting notes which can only be described as anti-inflationary propaganda, the short-term funds have been taking flight. How long this will last is anyone’s guess, but it is and always has been the Fed’s prerogative. Whatever market participants anticipate that they will do with the regards to the money supply flashes through the equity markets, as equities are essentially on the margin of visible economic activity.
Today we wish to bring two things to the attention of our fellow taxpayers, unfortunately both of them are somewhat ominous. They are nothing new, mind you, but as the warning signals of the next crisis and its probable outcome begin to appear on the horizon, we thought it best to keep interested readers informed.
First, Lee Adler over at the Wall Street Examiner, who performs a great service to the economic world by slicing through the economic propaganda to analyze the true data, shared this piece which is worthy of reading. It explains how the mountains of customer deposits are piling up at Commercial banks. If, and more probably when these deposits begin to be deployed in the real world, asset bubbles and inflation will begin to pop up in the US economy like lava flowing down the side of a volcano.
If Mr. Adler is correct, the Fed’s inflationary crazy train may be about to leave the station.
We are compelled to warn you that the next quote, from a piece by Jeff Neilson at www.gold-eagle.com, may be enough to make your blood boil if you are not one of the privileged classes (in other words, most of us) that he believes will likely benefit from the upcoming “Debt Jubilee,”
So what will our 21st century Debt Jubilee look like? With History’s most-corrupt governments, expect the most-corrupt “solution.” The debts of our governments, the Big Banks, and the wealthiest Oligarchs will be totally erased. We will be told they are doing this to “save us” from drowning in their (reckless/fraudulent) debts.
However, the Little People will face a somewhat different future. Their debts will be maintained at 100-cents-on-the-dollar. The bankers, politicians and Oligarchs (via their Corporate Media) will tell us that this is necessary to “protect the integrity of the System” (their System).
Think this level of perversity/injustice is impossible? We already have precedent. After the Wall Street banks had caused (created?) the Crash of ’08 (with their reckless fraud/gambling); and after they took their $15+ trillion from the U.S. government in assorted hand-outs, 0% loans, tax-breaks, and “loss guarantees” (i.e. more hand-outs); the Wall Street banksters kept their massive bonuses.
We were told this was because of “the sanctity of contracts.”
Then after this massive give-away; various U.S. governments began unilaterally hacking-and-slashing the wages, pensions, and benefits of their own workers – which had been freely/fairly negotiated in their own contracts. The reason? After giving $trillions to the bankers; the workers were told the government “couldn’t afford” to honor their contracts.
The sanctity of contracts is important, as all that men and women ultimately have in this world is their word. Unfortunately for most of us, we may soon find out just how much the government’s word is worth.
The following is the introduction of our soon to be released ebook on budgeting: Budgeting Healthy Habits: How to get the Dough you Knead. It will be available on Kindle later in the week. Stay Fresh and enjoy!
Dough: An introduction
dough-/dō/- noun -1. A thick, malleable mixture of flour and liquid, used for baking into bread or pastry. 2. Money: “lots of dough”.
Budgeting Healthy Habits: How to get the Dough you Knead
Dough. Unless you work in a bakery or pizza parlor, you probably can’t get enough of it. As we began to elaborate this current volume, which, at its base, is a presentation of our unconventional budget tips, we knew that it would be necessary to employ a metaphor to keep fellow taxpayers, who have any number of demands upon their time beyond budgeting, or seeking out metaphors, for that matter, engaged long enough to revolutionize their approach to money, which in turn will give them time to knead dough, ponder metaphors, compose run on sentences, or indulge any number of whims which may be germinating in the dark recesses of their minds at this very moment.
Most of the human race spends the better part of their waking moments either doing something or wondering what they should be doing. Human action is an ultimate given, and, as the band Rush reminds us in their early 80’s smash Freewill, “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”
The choices available to most of us are limited to the amount of dough that we have available or lack at any given moment. This goal of this volume is to equip you, fellow taxpayer, to dominate your dough situation and bake the loafs, pastries, or crusts in the style and quantities necessary to satiate your desires. If we are fortunate, this volume will convince you that the key to happiness is in helping others, however, this is a hypothesis that must be proved by personal experience, and is not the central theme.
Back to your dough. If you have been searching for information on budgeting and personal finance for any amount of time, we don’t have to tell you that there is an exhaustive amount of material. Finding good advice, or good advice which fits your situation, can be as difficult as finding a needle in a haystack. With this in mind, we present these healthy habits as morsels on a platter. You can choose to scarf them down in one sitting, which will undoubtedly shock your organism into convulsions, or you can take them in, one at a time, savoring each one while giving your organism adequate time to digest it, maintaining the nutrients and eliminating the waste through the proper channels.
The organism we speak of is your personal or family economy, which we recommend you treat with the utmost care.
Stay tuned to The Mint for the release later this week and Trust Jesus.
We were privileged today to witness an oath ceremony which is taken by residents of the United States who have chosen to become naturalized citizens. What we thought would be a mildly interesting event, which for those taking the oath serves as the final step towards becoming a full-fledged American citizen, moved us to tears.
The ceremony, far from being a bureaucratic event with little more to offer congratulatory remarks and an official seal affixed to a document, is a veritable celebration of the idea of America.
What is moving about the ceremony, at least for us, is a video segment which shows still shots of immigrants of the past, all of whom have come to America’s shores to escape oppression, seek opportunity, or both. It is very powerful.
After the ceremony, they show a brief video address by President Obama, where he welcomes the immigrants to America by inviting them to become part of the great American story which is now their story as well. He encourages them to do good both in their communities and throughout the world.
The ceremony is a celebration of the American idea, that all men and women are free, and that with this freedom comes the obligation to protect it and to share it with others. To use it for the betterment of mankind.
It chokes us up to think about it. We have only been brought to tears at the idea of America three times: First, in 1992, watching Carl Lewis anchor the 4 x 100 relay in Barcelona, where he covered 100 meters faster than any human being before or since. Second, while watching the movie Seabiscuit. And third, today, at the citizenship oath ceremony.
Despite the faults that are inherent in self-government, we will always be inspired by the idea of America and have a profound respect for immigrants, both legal and illegal, for they are the embodiment of this ideal.
In closing, we echo the President’s exhortation, both in the State of the Union and in his video message welcoming new US citizens, that we must all do what is within our power to better the lot of our fellow-man and woman, for to better their lot is to better our own.
Tonight’s State of the Union address by President Obama will once again draw a sharp focus on gun control, or lack thereof in the United States. The theory held out by gun control advocates is that restricting access to guns will serve as a deterrent to violence. Unfortunately, the statistics on a national and global scale argue firmly against this cause/effect relationship, as the following info-graphic illustrates:
Contrary to Utopian logic, an increase in overall gun ownership serves to decrease the rate of intentional homicides, not the reverse.
If a higher incidence of gun ownership paradoxically produces a lower intentional homicide rate, why would the idea of gun control be floated by the leader of the “Free” world at all, especially when such ideas are in clear contradiction with the document which He has sworn to uphold?
The Benefits of bad news
Mr. Obama and the rest of the well-meaning individuals who are at the head of the rallying cry for increased gun control have one thing in mind when they float such ideas:
Outliers
Columbine, Sandy Hook, and innumerable other mass shootings in recent history have cast a stigma over gun ownership that world improvers, our pet name for those who believe that they and only they know what is best for humanity, have latched on to as evidence that only certain persons should be allowed to possess firearms.
Clearly, mass shootings are horrific tragedies and attempts to avoid them should be made at all costs. Again, paradoxically, they seem to occur in environments when the instigator(s) are the only ones in possession of a firearm. However, while they race to the top of the news feeds when they occur, mass shootings are generally outliers to the human experience. As such, while they are horrific tragedies, they are not as common as one would think.
It is for these reasons, both that they are uncommon and that they are horrific, that the national psyche attaches to them and examines them the way one would rise to investigate an unexpected sound in the night. For it is our rightly held belief as human beings that these things should not be, and if they have occurred, then something must be wrong. The glory of free societies is the indomitable belief that if something is wrong, we, the people, can work to make it right.
In this sense, while we cringe at the many headlines that announce a mass shooting, or any act of violence, for that matter, we have trained ourselves to breathe a sigh of relief. For the very fact that they are being reported on means that an investigation of their root causes will rise to a level of national debate. This reporting and national debate is one of the healthiest expressions of free speech that can occur.
While we do not believe that gun control will serve to mitigate tragedies, we are pleased that the debate rages on, for the answers are out there, and it gives us hope for all of mankind that we are diligently searching for it.
After you are shocked by the next tragic headline that comes your way, remember to give thanks for your reaction. For this reaction, at its core, is an inkling of the hope for the betterment of all mankind that is alive and well within you.
So carry on, Mr. President, as Free men and women, we are privileged to hear you out, as well as disagree on solutions. We share your sorrow at these events, and will work to make a better world for ourselves and our posterity.
We are taking a brief break from Old Jules and our “To Build up the Land” series to present the introduction to our soon to be released e-book, the latest volume in the Why what we use as Money Matters series. Enjoy!
b: a state of lawlessness or political disorder due to the absence of governmental authority
c: a utopian society of individuals who enjoy complete freedom without government
2.a: absence or denial of any authority or established order
b: absence of order
Disarming the State is as simple as changing and then using one’s mind
Anarchy. The word strikes fear in the hearts general public, who have been trained to conjure images from fraternity house shenanigans to rioting and looting on the streets of important cities at its mention. For most civilized persons, with these mental images close at hand, anarchy is something to be avoided at all costs. How can civilized society carry on with the threat of bombs and looting effectively slamming the brakes on human progress?
In this volume, we seek to free the concept of anarchy from these negative connotations. For anarchy, far from being the greater evil in the choice amongst evils when it comes to man’s state in this world, is really not a choice at all. Rather, anarchy is something that every human being and animal on the planet is born into. It is the basic state of man in this world. It is an ultimate given.
As an ultimate given, it is futile, nay, self-destructive for men and women to live their lives fretting about falling from a state of order into one of anarchy. The line of thinking is debilitating and counterproductive to what must be mankind’s highest and most urgent calling in the physical realm: How best to respond to the state of anarchy in which they live.
For it is not anarchy itself that causes disorder and the other maladies which the mere mention of the word bring to mind, but mankind’s failed responses to this ultimate given under which they labor and cause others to labor on their behalf. The only thing more dangerous than confusing anarchy for the disorder which arises from the collapse of a failed response to it, is to spend ones life’s toils aiding another person’s failed response to his or her inherently anarchic surroundings.
Further, this volume seeks to give the reader a sufficient level of awareness to step back, if even for a moment, to evaluate the response to anarchy under which they are currently laboring and make a sober evaluation as to whether they are truly laboring in alignment with their own best interests.
Too many lives have been wasted laboring under a mistaken fear and avoidance of anarchy, and we hope this volume will steer the reader away from this fate. It may not change the way you think or what you do at all, and that is good. For to personally validate ones own course in life with a firmer grasp of the facts has caused harm to no one. In fact, it should cause one to carry on with a renewed sense of pride and purpose. We only encourage you, then, to offer others the chance to give their own lives a sober evaluation, and respect their decision to change once they truly understand the wonderful anarchy into which we are all born.
The book is now available on Kindle and will be available on Smashwords in early May.
Today we continue with our exploration of the concept of building up the land. We are using, as our living example of someone who dedicated their life to building up a harsh land, a Swiss settler of the sandhills of western Nebraska, Old Jules.
Yesterday, before we deviated into our normal rant about the monetary premium being attached to debt instruments being the root cause of widespread resource misallocation and, by extension, what today is called “climate change,” we explored the idea that mankind was created to live in balance with the earth.
He was neither to overly molest it via excessive development nor ignore it via draconian conservation methods. Rather, he was to build up the earth, and in turn allow himself to be built up by it.
There are preconditions for man to be able to live in balance with the land. First and foremost, he must live in relative peace. If one is to invest adequate time in building up the land, he or she cannot spend an inordinate amount of time preoccupied for and tending to their personal safety. This is why war, far from being an economic boon, is ultimately fatal to man’s efforts to build up the land.
How, then, can peace be encouraged? By allowing uninhibited trade between communist style communities, such as families or tribes. As we explored yesterday, the link between free trade and peace is so strong that it can be said that if goods do not cross borders, soldiers will.
It all seems ideal, doesn’t it? Living in peace, in perfect balance with nature and our fellow man. It doesn’t sound like much to ask of everyone. Yet in practice, building up the land is a difficult endeavor. It is so difficult, that most people, when given the choice between working to build up the land and enjoying the fruits of the land, naturally choose the latter. The debt based money supply has allowed an unprecedented number of humans to spend more of their time enjoying the fruits than building up the land, and every day that this situation persists brings the actions of mankind further out of balance with the need to “build up the land.”
What type of person chooses to build up the land? In gentle climates, like the one we currently enjoy in Oregon, where a minimal effort in planting often leads to an above average yield, gentle persons can build up the land. As the land is strong, the people don’t have to be.
This has been true of the indigenous groups who inhabited the territories and, at the risk of offending our fellow Portlanders, we dare say that it is true of the population today. If one can stand the rain, life is relatively easy. A gentle, forgiving land will produce a gentle and forgiving people.
The corollary to this, naturally, is that a hard and unforgiving land will initially yield a hard and unforgiving people. Or, as Sunday’s Dodge Ram truck Super Bowl spot reminds us, on the eighth day, God made a Farmer:
Again for proof of this, we turn to Mari Sandoz’s account of her father, Old Jules. Jules Sandoz, our settler of 100 years ago, lived in a harsh land. He lived peacefully with the indigenous peoples there, who were being forced away by the Federal Army. He lived less peacefully with the bankers and cattlemen, who attempted to claim the land he was trying to build up by force.
Sandoz give us a glimpse into her rough, determined, and surprisingly refined father:
“Jules Sandoz was not a nice man, but he was smart and tough and talented, and he was a survivor.”
“Old Jules was always ready to serve as a “locator,” to help a new arrival stake out a claim and “find his corners,” locate the precise boundaries of his land. For this, he charged little or nothing, as he wanted so badly to “build up, build up” the community.”
“His (Old Jules’) house was briefly the local post office, until he feuded with the officials and they took it away. His place was the unofficial storytelling center of the community. His skinny daughter, Marie (later Mari {the author}), would hang back in the darkness to stay up and listen to the immigrants and Indians {Indigenous peoples} and, less frequently, the cowboys tell their tales.
Old Jules maintained a well-stocked medical kit and was the unofficial frontier doctor to one and all. He befriended the local Indians, some of the last Lakotas to live free in lodges, tipis, near his home. They called him “Straight Eye,” honoring his shooting skill. He spent windfall money he could ill afford on a Victrola {record player} and phonograph records, because he liked good music and thought he and his family should have it. They loved it.”
“Old Jules became a nationally known fruit breeder and grower, a correspondent of Luther Burbank. He was sure that this land was ideal for raising cherries. He was wrong. It wasn’t.”
Excerpts from “Old Jules” by Mari Sandoz
It took hard people, like Old Jules and the nomadic indigenous people who passed through the Sandhills following the ratings {bison}, to slowly build up a hard land. As the land became softer, Old Jules became softer. For this reason, Old Jules was passionate about bringing settlers to the Sandhills to build up the land.
Today, the sandhills of Western Nebraska are inhabited by kinder persons who have reaped the benefits of the efforts of pioneers like Old Jules. He and countless others whom he encouraged have worked to build up the land to a point where the effort to build it up is falling into balance with the time spent enjoying its fruits.
In Oregon and the Pacific Northwest, the opposite may be happening. Attempts to minimize man’s interaction with the land via conservation, essentially declaring the land off limits for development, is conserving countless acres of land as wilderness. While the efforts are noble and well intentioned, this too will, over time, throw the efforts of man to build up the land out of balance with the time spend enjoying the fruits of the land.
For it is true that the land needs rest, just as man needs rest. But rest must come in the right proportion for both man and the land to maintain their edge and to keep the dynamic between mankind and the land in a healthy balance, allow both to rest and production in a perfect proportion, providing for the future without robbing the next generation of the tools needed to continue building up the land.
“Then once more he raised his head, his face alive, his eyes far-focused, burning. He began to talk slowly, as though his lips were metal, stiffening. “The whole damn sandhills is deserted. The cattlemen are broke, the settlers about gone. I got to start all over-ship in a lot of good farmers in the spring, build up–build–build–“
Old Jules’ dying words from the biography entitled “Old Jules” by Mari Sandoz
Today at The Mint, we continue our journey, and we are glad that you are along with us. With the inflationary fruits of five, nay, 100 years of loose monetary policy beginning to destroy the very currencies which gave birth to them, the world will all too soon be left to pick up the pieces and boldly move forward when all hope is lost.
When there is no hope, one must fight to become hope. This is our charge to you, fellow taxpayer. Fortunately, this is far from the first time that mankind has found itself in this situation. For inspiration, we look back roughly 100 years to a man who had a vision for a place that was then, as now, a place that is difficult to inhabit, the sandhills region of Northwestern Nebraska. (The sandhills have appeared in the news as a possible route for the long delayed Keystone pipeline.)
That man is Old Jules.
Old Jules was a Swiss immigrant who settled in the sandhills and, as our title implies, devoted much of his interesting life to “building up the land.” What does it mean to build up the land? Your idea of building up the land probably means something quite different than my idea of building up the land, and we would both probably have visions quite different for building up the land than someone living 100 years ago, like Old Jules.
Yet all of our visions have merit, for the idea of building up the land, while it may manifest itself in any number of different ways, implies working with the land to help it produce.
The whole idea of man being able to help the land to increase its production and that production helping mankind, in turn, to increase their own production (or reproduction, to be precise), is a miracle. For those who inhabit urban settings, it may seem a mystery from a far off place.
Yet it is the command received by Adam and Eve at the dawn of creation.
Man was never meant to sit back and simply eat the fruits passively produced by the land, rather, the creation and mankind were created to have an intercourse, if you will, with the fruit of one producing fruit in the other, and vice versa. Mankind’s activities were meant to be intimately connected to the land. Mankind is to build up the land, and, in return, the land will build up mankind.
While the Victorian Yeoman farmer ideal may immediately spring to mind when one thinks of building up the land, it should be clear to any thinking person that the division of labor is a far more productive and resilient system by which to build up the land and to reap the benefits of such building.
Even in the Yeoman model, the division of labor existed. One fetched wood, another dug and plowed, another prepared food, still another shelter, and another fetched water, and so on.
The division of labor could flourish beyond close knit communal groups, such as families or tribes, only via a system of trade. The concept of trade, which further enables the division of labor to operate, is important not only for the concept of building up the land, but also for the maintenance of peaceful relations amongst communal groups.
The link between mutual trade and maintaining peace between groups is inseparable. In the words of Frederic Bastait:
“If goods do not cross borders, soldiers will.”
If all of these things, building up the land, the division of labor, and the necessity of trade, are to operate, the concept of money, or what is better described as the emergence of a good of the highest order which carries a monetary premium, must be tacitly agreed upon by all groups that engage in trade.
Today, circa 2013, there is something desperately wrong with where the monetary premium is placed today: Central bank credits, or what most of us know as currency, or money. The problem is that they are debt, and not part of the natural world.
Because the monetary premium has been tied to debt, the operation of money, which should serve to build up the land, instead operates to tear it down. The obvious effects of this purely monetary problem have led man, a la Al Gore, to react to effects the environment by treating a limitless myriad of symptoms. The most extreme of which is the cry for conservation. At its extreme, conservation seeks to cut off the intercourse of man and the land, ensuring the ultimate death of both.
What the land needs, however, is neither the over zealous building up which takes place in the debt based monetary system, nor the sterile, hands off idleness called for by extreme conservation agendas.
What both the land and mankind desperately need, is balance. The only way to achieve this balance, is to return the monetary premium to things in the natural realm.
One of our many “inquietudes” (a Spanish word for which a rough English translation would be agitation) here at The Mint is that the concept of money has been removed from the natural realm of coin, currency, or anything physical and naturally occurring (at least at a base level), and has been elevated and attached to the enigma of a debt, which exists purely in the imagination, if not aspirations, of men and women.
The disconnection, while giving rise to advances beyond our imagination, has thrown the earth’s resources wildly out of balance, via the unnatural transfer of control into few hands.
What many Keynesian trained economists praise as a triumph over the shackles of specie money, we lament as perhaps the ultimate delusion of our time. Such is the delusion that nary one in a million men will understand these words.
As we begin the month of February, it would appear that the US Economy has suffered from a couple of data shocks, which, taken at face value, would call into question the validity of the current rally in nearly every asset class (save bonds) and give rise to fears of the US slipping into another Recession or worse.
First, the Gross Domestic Product read came in at a negative 0.1% for the fourth quarter. The GDP is mostly a bogus data point in an economy with a debt based currency. At this point, the negative data, like most data that will appear this year, will give the Federal Reserve the statistical cover they need to continue QE and decimate the dollar.
The Unemployment rate, which inched up slightly, falls into the same category. Given the paradigm shift that the US workforce is undergoing as the internet makes geography a non issue for anyone who works from a computer, and the demographic shift as the Baby Boomers ease into retirement make it hard to say what would constitute an appropriate amount of Unemployment at this time.
Full employment has always been a slippery concept, and at this point, the BLS statistics can be counted on to err on the side of covering the inflationary consequences of QE as well.
What has not changed is that people, when given the chance, will tend to spend more money than they have. This tendency is again being allowed to manifest itself as credit restrictions are easing in the US and soon, even your cat will begin to receive credit card offers as they did in the good old days of 2005.
The Federal Reserve and every Central Bank on the planet have stuffed every orifice of the financial system with cash, so much so that they must lend gobs of it out to remain solvent. The consumers are taking the bait, and the wave of inflation is now rolling through stocks and commodities. It will not stop until QE stops.
And given the propaganda that passed as economic data prints this past week, QE will be with us for quite some time. Plan and invest accordingly.
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