Category Archives: Events

World Events

9/11/2015 Portland, Oregon – Pop in your mints…

September 11th has become a day of remembrance in what was formerly the land of the free. The horrific spectacle of the events that unfolded in New York and Washington that infamous day will be forever etched in the memory of our generation. While we did not realize it at the time, it was the day that the United States lost a great deal of freedoms.

The external restrictions that have been imposed on society post 9/11 are well documented. The passage of the Patriot Act has given the government carte blanche when it comes to surveillance and disregard for due process. While these practices have always been employed to some degree, the Patriot Act in a sense legitimized them.

Perhaps more devastating, however, has been the mental shift that 9/11 caused in the thought of US Citizens. Pre 9/11/2001, the US was a place where truly anything was possible, it was the Land of the Free, the sky was the limit. Humankind had just “survived” the Y2K non-catastrophic event and credit flowed freely.

More importantly, though, our minds were free.

Naturally, we can only speak of our own experience, but we would be willing to bet that many who lived these events would agree. Pre 9/11, the United States was a completely different country.

Ironically, 9/11/2001 was the day after we had been laid off from our first job. We had cornered ourselves in Internal Audit, which for the uninitiated, is the first department to get the axe when cost cutting measures are employed. Really, who wants to pay people to tell them what they are doing wrong all day unless they can justify the expense?

We received the memo and our final check on the 10th. On the 11th, we woke up to the first day of freedom that we could recall, turned on Good Morning America, and watched the events unfold. At that point they were speculating that the first tower was some sort of small aircraft accident. A caller from New Jersey was on and said, with a grave seriousness in his voice, that it was not a small aircraft, but a commercial airliner. Then, on live television, the second airplane hit the second tower. We are embedding a YouTube video of this moment for those who did not see it. Please be advised that it is indeed disturbing and skip it if you do not want to be shocked:

It was at that point that we knew something bigger than ourselves was occurring, and God had set us there to PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT WAS GOING ON! We were new to Christianity, true Christianity, and had begun to truly commune with God over the past several months. To those who have not had similar conversations with the creator, this will sound strange, but God does speak quite clearly to those who are paying attention.

Anyway, God said, “It’s time.”

This has set our life on a completely different course, one that you, fellow taxpayer, are now a part of.

Ah yes, we were going to explain why money does not exist, at least not in the sense that most understand it.

The Federal Reserve is set to meet in September. There is an expectation that they will raise interest rates. However, there is also a sense that the economy is somehow still in a funk. What is the Fed to do?

We postulated earlier this year that the Fed would sooner raise interest rates than end its QE money printing programs. We were wrong, QE ended before rates increased. However, we hold out the spectre that, eventually, perhaps this month, the Fed will need to increase its target rate. When it does, it will cause big problems for large banks. Banks will need a buyer for the masses of Treasuries they have to hold as a result of Dodd-Frank. The Fed will buy them at cost (not market, as their market value will be dropping), effectively reinstating their QE program.

They will raise rates on the short end and work to maintain lower than natural long rates. Anything else would spell disaster for the economy.

Why can the Fed employ QE (electronic money printing) in the first place? Because money does not exist. What we use as money is really credit. Credit and Money are opposite elements in the realm of economics. They should cancel each other out.

Now that Money is credit, the productive activities of humankind are aligning themselves in direct conflict with the needs of the natural world. And the chasing of non-existent money is causing humankind to strip mine the earth.

Will we learn in time?

Stay tuned and Trust Jesus.

Stay Fresh!

David Mint

Email: davidminteconomics@gmail.com

Key Indicators for September 11, 2015

Copper Price per Lb: $2.43
Oil Price per Barrel: $44.79

Corn Price per Bushel: $3.62
10 Yr US Treasury Bond: 2.19%
Bitcoin price in US: $240.28
FED Target Rate: 0.14%
Gold Price Per Ounce: $1,106

MINT Perceived Target Rate*: 0.25%
Unemployment Rate: 5.1%
Inflation Rate (CPI): 0.1%
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 16,330
M1 Monetary Base: $3,132,300,000,000

M2 Monetary Base: $12,088,500,000,000

AFP 2014, Bitcoins, Events, Monetary Theory

Bitcoin Panel Illuminates the World of Crypto-currencies for the Oregon AFP

February 21, 2015 David Mint

2/21/2015 Portland, Oregon – Pop in your mints…

For those who were unable to join us on Wednesday, the Bitcoin panel discussion at the Oregon AFP was a great success. With us were six of the finest minds in Crypto-currencies in the Portland area. These minds, together with some of the finest financial practitioners in the city, worked to bridge the gap between the Bitcoin universe and mainstream commerce.

We were pleased to find that the two are really not that far apart.

While there were a number of keen insights shared at yesterday’s meeting at the Multnomah Athletic Club, three stood out in our minds:

1) Transactions volume in Bitcoin has soared over the past two years and the USD/Bitcoin price action has settled down as a result. Further, Venture Capital is pouring into the Bitcoin industry, proving that crypto-currencies, once on the exciting confluence of technology and money, are now entering the relatively boring yet infinitely more profitable economic mainstream.

2) Bitcoin innovators have largely solved the problem that has thus far kept most bankers at bay: KYC, Know Your Customer.

3) Concerns about Bitcoin’s wild fluctuations in value are addressed by services that instantly exchange Bitcoins accepted in trade into national currencies. This is especially important for those who transact day-to-day business in Bitcoin, as it is technically considered property for tax purposes and could otherwise create an accounting nightmare. It also allows for a clear delineation between Bitcoin speculation and Bitcoin circulation, two completely different activities before were often unwittingly commingled by virtue of one’s use of Bitcoin in trade.

Bitcoin has come a long way since we published our 48 hour crash analysis of the emergent monetary revolution back in 2013, and our panelists did a superb job of presenting a balanced discussion of the present state of crypto-currencies.

A special thanks once again to all of our panelists, Lawrence I Lerner, Ian Pulicano, Anna Guyton, Mike Fors, George Fogg, and Rhys Faler, who was planning on spectating and found himself on the panel in the midst of an incredibly rich, informative, and relevant discussion of the merits and challenges of Bitcoin.

Ian had the difficult task of breaking the ice of ignorance and/or skepticism that is often associated with presenting the concept of Bitcoin to someone for the first time, which is never an easy task. Beyond explaining the technical side in a concise manner, the slide near the end which highlighted the exponential growth in transactions and VC funding over the past 3 years got everyone’s attention and set the stage nicely for the discussion that followed. Anna did a great job of stepping up as moderator and added valuable insights throughout, Lawrence did an excellent job of bridging the knowledge gap between industry and Bitcoin through helpful analogies, Mike and Rhys provided the evidence that Bitcoin can and is being used in everyday transactions, and George added insight into the inherent challenges and opportunities of Bitcoin on the regulatory and securitization side of the house.

At the end of the hour, the audience was left with one inescapable conclusion: Crypto-currencies are here, are here to stay, and will be part of one’s economic experience in the not too distant future.

For the benefit of those who were unable to join us on Wednesday, we offer the following bootleg recording of the event:

We also offer the hope that these types of panels will be held in other venues where finance and technology intersect, and that mankind will be all the better off for it.

Stay Fresh!

David Mint

Key Indicators for February 21, 2015

Copper Price per Lb: $2.58
Oil Price per Barrel: $50.81

Corn Price per Bushel: $3.85
10 Yr US Treasury Bond: 2.13%
Bitcoin price in US: $246.31
FED Target Rate: 0.09%
Gold Price Per Ounce: $1,204

MINT Perceived Target Rate*: 0.25%
Unemployment Rate: 5.7%
Inflation Rate (CPI): -0.3%

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 18,140
M1 Monetary Base: $2,884,400,000,000

M2 Monetary Base: $11,771,600,000,000

AFP 2014, Events

Bitcoin, Cryptocurrencies, and Alternative Payment Systems: A Panel Discussion

February 13, 2015 David Mint

For those who are in the Portland area, the Oregon & SW Washington Association for Financial Professionals is hosting a panel discussion on Bitcoin, Cryptocurrencies, and Alternative Payment Systems on Wednesday, February 18th at 11:30am at the Multnomah Athletic Club.

As you can see, the panelists are top notch:

Lawrence I Lerner of LERNER Consulting – Change Agent in digital strategy, payments, security, change management, and retail: http://lawrenceilerner.com/

Ian Pulicano – Digital currency specialist and co-founder of Bit Consultants. Building the new paradigm

Anna Guyton – Co-Founder of Bit Consultants, Bitcoin educator and integration specialist, encouraging individual and local self-sufficiency https://bitconsultants.org/

Mike Fors – Founder of BitcoinNW, Bitcoin evangelist, and owner of a Bitcoin Kiosk located in Pioneer Square: www.bitcoinnw.com

George K. Fogg – Partner, Perkins Coie, LLP, national co-chair of firm’s Financial Transactions and Restructuring practice and a member of the firm’s Virtual Currency Team

Your’s truly will be moderating and generally trying to stay out of the way of what promises to be an interesting, informative, and timely discussion amongst those in the Pacific Northwest who are at the forefront in this exciting and perplexing space.

You can register for the event here: http://oregonafp.camp7.org/event-1844146

First time guests to the group are free, which is a nice. Hurry, though, as space is limited. Hope to see you for this important topic and Stay Fresh!

AFP 2014, Education, Events

Thomas Friedman’s Brief Theory of Everything

December 15, 2014 David Mint

12/15/2014 Portland, Oregon – Pop in your mints…

At the closing session of the 2014 AFP National Conference, New York Times columnist and three time Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas Friedman gave a great discourse related to the biggest trends in the US and indeed the world today. For those who are unfamiliar with Friedman’s work, suffice it to say that he is one of the more influential voices on the planet via his post at the New York Times. As his discourse will reveal, he writes on foreign affairs, globalization, and environmental issues.

Thomas Friedman By Charles Haynes (Charles Haynes' flickr account) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons — Thomas Friedman By Charles Haynes (Charles Haynes’ flickr account) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Friedman is also a bestselling author, and many of his working hypotheses can be found in his 2005 International Best Seller, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. In the book, Friedman lays out 10 “flatteners,” or things that he points to that are enabling the trend of leveling the global playing field.

On the afternoon of November 4^th in Washington, D.C., Friedman shared a number of interesting insights with our audience of Finance leaders, among them is his own recognition of the effects that the forces he describes have on his own ability to influence American and global thought. As he puts it {with a slight paraphrase to add context}, “Thirty years ago, James Reston, my predecessor would ask himself every morning, ‘I wonder what my seven competitors are going to write today?’ Today, I sit in my office and ask myself ‘I wonder what my 70 million competitors are going to write today?”

While we may not agree completely with Friedman’s ideologies at base, it cannot be denied that he is compelling to listen to. His voice is inquisitive and familiar, and his depth of experience in the idea realm gives his opinions, whether one fully agrees with them or not, a strange authority of their own. You can listen via the link below to one of the finest discourses we have ever had the pleasure of listening to:

Below are some of the most interesting points Friedman brings up, along with their corresponding time stamp on the above recording:

At 2:40: Is the US’s OODA loop broken? Friedman expresses concern about the US Government’s ability to Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act using a metaphor from the US Air Force.

At 4:25: – As Historians look back at our times, Friedman believes that they would identify as the most important things happening in the early 21^st is that the three biggest forces on the planet, The Market, Moore’s Law, and Mother Nature, all went into hyper growth at the same time.

At 5:50: – The story of the Chessboard brought up in the book The Second Machine Age. The Chessboard parable is cited as popular in Silicon Valley, and the morale is that, when you double something 63 times, you get 18 quintillion of whatever it is. Friedman cites the Chessboard analogy a number of times in the discourse. He believes that the world is in the “Second half of the Chessboard” in terms of the velocity of change with respect to The Market, Moore’s Law, and Mother Nature.

At 8:00: – The 2004 Thesis of The World Is Flat is that the convergence of four factors, the PC, the Internet, Workflow Software, and Search capabilities, that were melding together to form a platform that was allowing for large scale collaboration on a level never before experienced. {Editor’s Note: We closely observed this trend as an MBA student in Barcelona and it has continued to transform the way we live and work today, 10 years on. }

At 11:07 – In the past 10 years, with the advent of Facebook, Twitter, Skype, and the like, the world went from connected to hyper connected, and from interconnected to interdependent. We are in the second half of the Chessboard with regards to globalization.

At 13:45 – Friedman begins to speak on the Environment, what happens when Mother Nature enters the second half of the Chessboard. He cites the fact that the amount of carbon in the earth’s atmosphere is increasing 100 times faster today than it was at the end of the last ice age. He also observes that the population of the earth has doubled in his lifetime, from 1959 to 1999, from 3 billion to 6 billion people.

At 21:00 – Friedman brings up the drought in Syria between 2006 and 2010, the most severe in modern history, as the cause of the revolution that rages there today. One million Syrians, who had previously dedicated themselves to agriculture in the countryside, flocked to the cities, overwhelming the infrastructure. Here, he also highlights the fact that Sao Paulo, Brazil, may become the first major city to run out of water due to a combination of a prolonged drought and the effects of deforestation of the wetlands and watersheds of its major water sources.

At 22:30 – What does it mean? This is a great world to be a consumer, a maker (Entrepreneur), and a breaker (here Friedman cites ISIS’s use of social media as its command and control system). It is a terrible world to be a leader (every leader is in a two way conversation).

At 30:10 – Average is over for countries as Mother Nature, The Market, and Moore’s Law enter the second half of the chessboard. Developing countries are stressed, and weak countries are failing and entering disorder.

At 32:52 – This is perhaps Friedman’s most important insight Average is over for every worker. Every worker must identify their unique value add. “When I graduated from college, I had to find a job. When you graduate from college, you will need to make your job.” Every middle class job is being pulled up, out, and down. The high wage, middle skill job, is over. There are now only high wage, high skill jobs.

At 36:31 – Friedman speaks of the effects of Globalization on his own job. Thanks to the internet, he now has 70 million competitors whereas his predecessor, James Reston, had 7.

At 39:30 – The three tiers of work, the first tier was non-routine, second tier was routine; the third tier was non-routine, local work, are being rattled to the core. The second tier is being crushed, and the wages of the third tier non-routine depends upon the quality of the first tier non-routine. Further, the first tier, non-routine must also be “creative” non-routine.

At 42:00 – You need more than the three R’s: Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic, you need the four c’s: Creativity, Communication, Collaboration, and Critical Thinking, and the “M”: Self-motivation.

At 44:07 – Now that the digital divide is gone, the good news ceilings and walls are gone; the bad news is that so are the floors. For example, as an employer, Google doesn’t care what you know because it knows everything, but what you can do with it.

At 45:30 – Friedman’s five pieces of advice for his children, 1) Think like an immigrant, be a paranoid optimist, we are all new immigrants to the hyper connected world, 2) Think like an artisan, make what you make special, give it an extra effort, carve your initials into it, 3) Always be in beta, in Silicon Valley there is only one four letter word, Finished. Always be in beta. Literacy today is the ability to learn and relearn, 4) pq + cq > iq. Perseverance/passion quotient + curiousity quotient is greater than a high intelligence quotient, 5) Think like an Entrepreneur: Friedman paraphrases this as “Think like a pancake waitress,” do your best with those things under your control, and where you can, add value.

At 51:12 – Friedman fields a few questions from the audience and shares his thoughts on what needs to occur in the realm of politics. The comments are timely as they come on the date of the 2014 US midterm elections.

This is one of the better discourses that we have been privileged to attend. It is clear that Friedman is a deep thinker and has learned the art of expressing himself. He is not especially clairvoyant, but he is deeply in touch with the times. Evidence of his hypotheses is literally surging from every corner of the globe.

What will be your value add in the brave, new, flat, hyper connected world that is fast coming upon us?

Stay tuned and Trust Jesus.

Stay Fresh!

David Mint

Key Indicators for December 15, 2014

Copper Price per Lb: $2.94
Oil Price per Barrel (WTI): $55.99

Corn Price per Bushel: $4.08
10 Yr US Treasury Bond: 2.12%
Bitcoin price in US: $351.50
FED Target Rate: 0.12%
Gold Price Per Ounce: $1,197

MINT Perceived Target Rate*: 0.25%
Unemployment Rate: 5.8%
Inflation Rate (CPI): 0.0%
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 17,218
M1 Monetary Base: $2,966,700,000,000

M2 Monetary Base: $11,635,400,000,000

Economics, Events

The Bank of Russia Dwarfed in Oil Price War

December 3, 2014 David Mint

12/3/2014 Portland, Oregon – Pop in your mints…

In case you haven’t been following our key indicators lately, the price of oil has taken a nosedive over the past three months, falling nearly 30% from late September. If you drive an SUV or run an airline, this is great news. If you are Russian or in some way invested in or employed by US based shale oil operations or work extracting oil from the Alberta Tar Sands, this is bad news.

First, let’s take a look at the effects on Russia, which have dominated the headlines. The Russian economy is heavily reliant on oil and has one of the largest petroleum industries in the world. It has the world’s eighth largest oil reserves and is the largest exporter of oil in the world in absolute numbers. Since the chart below, which highlights the rise of Russia’s productive capacity and post cold war era export capacity, was produced in by Plazak back in 2013, Russian production has continued its study rise through 2014, posting a post-Soviet record of 10.61 million barrels per day in September.

Russian Oil Production Chart By Plazak (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Further, Russia produces approximately 73 barrels of oil per day per 1,000 inhabitants, compared with approximately 37 barrels of oil per day produced in the US per 1,000 people.

Oh yes, and it has been reported that the 2015-2017 budget forecast of the Russian Government was based on the assumption of oil being priced at $100 per barrel (they are now revising it to around $85, $20 some dollars ago in the real world). Unlike the most of us in the US, that is a revenue assumption for them.

Financial markets are watching this and licking their chops, Russia is a short no matter how you slice it. Their oil industry and economy live in a world that ceased to exist about the time the price of oil spiked and drove the world’s largest consumers, the US, to search for alternatives.

The Russian Central Bank has spent at least $82 Billion in its foreign exchange reserves through October of 2014 in what has proven a feeble effort to prop up the Ruble. It spent $700 million on Monday alone, and it is not working. Were the heads of the Russian Central Bank thinking a bit more clearly, they may have been wise to carefully intervene in the oil markets before their currency got lashed. Alas, the Central Bankers of the World are seldom blessed with the gift of clairvoyance.

The Bank of Russia should have bought oil

But what about the US? As the world’s largest oil producer at nearly 12 million barrels a day, won’t the United States economy fall victim to the latest drop in oil prices as well? That is the premise of Michael Snyder, writing over at The Economic Collapse blog:

Guess What Happened The Last Time The Price of Oil Crashed Like This?…

While Snyder does make some compelling points about the 1.7 million jobs that the fracking boom has produced, the US is nowhere near Russia in terms of oil price dependency for its economic health.

We have three concrete reasons that we place forward for your inspection, fellow taxpayer, as to why the impact on the US will be minimal or even positive:

1) While the US produces 12 million barrels per day, it consumes 18.8 million barrels. As such, the higher price of oil still works as a quasi tax on the US as opposed to a concrete revenue source.

2) The US economy is the most dynamic on the planet. As long as credit is available, it will create jobs.

3) The Fed is still in a mode of underpinning the economy and has maintained its unconditional guarantee of the post financial crisis stock and bond markets. They would quickly contain the oil based junk bond issue that Snyder brings up.

The US economy is eternally susceptible to one thing and one thing only, a sustained decrease in consumer credit and government debt, neither of which is likely in the near term. While the Fed has hinted at raising rates, the current crisis in Russia, if anything, gives them sway to keep their various stimuli in place or on the ready as the crisis is feeding dollar strength, so the Fed doesn’t have to.

It will not always be so, as the Fed itself will one day implode on its own merits (or lack thereof). For the moment, it is the Bank of Russia playing the jester in this play.

Stay tuned and Trust Jesus.

Stay Fresh!

David Mint

Key Indicators for December 3, 2014

Copper Price per Lb: $2.92
Oil Price per Barrel (WTI): $67.10

Corn Price per Bushel: $3.68
10 Yr US Treasury Bond: 2.29%
Bitcoin price in US: $377.28
FED Target Rate: 0.13%
Gold Price Per Ounce: $1,205

MINT Perceived Target Rate*: 0.25%
Unemployment Rate: 5.8%
Inflation Rate (CPI): 0.0%
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 17,880
M1 Monetary Base: $2,765,000,000,000

M2 Monetary Base: $11,607,000,000,000

Events

Our Unwitting Journey Towards Lumbersexual Fashion

November 22, 2014 David Mint

“Though he works for a software company he looks like he just walked out of the forest: His beard is shaggy, (he wears) the boots and shirt of a lumberjack. The Lumbersexual man, with his savage style, is displacing the Metrosexual in the urban landscape.”

-Rough translation of the opening paragraph of following article from Cochabamba’s “Los Tiempos”:

Adiós metrosexuales, el “lumbersexual” salió del bosque

The Spanish-speaking media recently picked up on the what has, at least from our perspective, become a slowly developing trend over the past few years: The rise of the Lumbersexual.

If you need a primer on what exactly is a Lumbersexual, Tom Puzak, writing over at GearJunkie.com, who’s work is referenced in the Los Tiempos article, sums it up well in the following article:

The Rise of the Lumbersexual

Fashion is not our forté here at The Mint, but this trend is somewhat personal as we have unwittingly begun to embrace it.

The seeds for this fashion trend, at least in the Portland area, were planted by the publicity tactics of the Portland Timbers in 2011, who at the time began to drape billboards and painted buildings in the city with images of men, women, and children wielding chainsaws and axes. This continues to some extent today.

With this subliminal messaging firmly embedded in our subconscious, we were thrust into the Lumbersexual style via our well publicized tree incident back in 2012, in which an unfortunate household accident caused us to get in touch with our inner lumberjack (Scroll down to the “Black Locust” heading on this link). While we had the larger tree felled by an arborist, we purchased the requisite chainsaw and the other tools of the lumberjack and went at the beast in our yard until we could no more. We left it for the winter.

The following summer, our inner lumberjack was summoned once again when the HOA presented us with an ultimatum to “get the wood off of our lawn.”

While we had the tools (we have since moved up to an 8 pound axe and added a 9′ pole saw to our arsenal), it was not until two years ago that we began to wear a beard. We simply felt it was time. The only time we had worn a beard before was for two unfortunate weeks in the mid ’90s when we contracted the chicken pox at 19 years of age and we were unable to shave under the threat of permanent scarring. When we began to hear reports that men in Miami, who could not grow a beard, were paying up to $8,000 for facial implants, we knew we were squarely in the middle of a fashion trend, a rarity for The Mint.

Where did it all start? While Lumberjacks have been admired, especially here in the Land of Giants, from time immemorial, we like to attribute the latest trend to comedic origins such as Monty Python:

And Red Green:

Whatever the origins, the Lumbersexual is now out of the Forest and into the Urban landscape. For the sake of the trees, it come as a relief that most of us wield iMacs instead of axes.

Bible Teaching, Events, Jesus, Rapture

IT’S ROSH HASHANAH 5775, IS YOUR LAMP LIT?

September 24, 2014 David Mint

Shana Tova! Today marks the beginning of the Jewish high holiday Rosh Hashanah, a celebration of the new year, a celebration of the creation of the world. Once again, we pause and reflect on what has been, what is, and most importantly, what is to come.

With each new year comes a deeper understanding of what is occurring in the world. This understanding is a gift from God, as we have all been given a unique dose of both wisdom and perspective. As Rosh Hashanah 5775 is upon us, God is calling each and every one of us to use the wisdom and perspective he has given us to carry on in our unique calling.

This year it has been given to us to explore quantam physics, and its how it explains any number of phenomena, such as prayer and eternity, which are often dismissed by natural science. It is a call to believe and walk in faith and courage.

It has also been given to us to present the healing miracles of Jesus presented in the Gospel of Luke, during the first ten weeks of 2015 on the Gregorian calendar.

It is now time to remind ourselves why Rosh Hashanah is especially important for those of us who believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the promised Messiah.

The Feast of Trumpets and the Messiah’s Return

We are convinced that the Messiah, Jesus, is returning. We are equally convinced that it has not been given to any man to know the exact time of his return.

What we do know is that we will know the season of his return. The interpretations which we have heard of Jesus’s declaration recorded in Matthew 24:36 generally center around the premise that some sort of series of great catastrophes will be unfolding and a series of signs will be in some stage of fulfillment, implying that these things will mark the season of Jesus’s return.

Here at The Mint, we subscribe to a much simpler and more profound understanding of this scripture, drawn from an understanding of the Jewish wedding ceremony. Jesus will arrive during the fall season in the Northern Hemisphere.

In fact, based on the timing of His death and resurrection, the Passover, we believe that His triumphant return will logically take place over Rosh Hashanah. The celebrated Feast of Trumpets.

Feast of trumpets by Aleksander Gierymski (1850–1901): Painting of Hasidic Jews performing tashlikh (ritual washing away of sins) on Rosh Hashanah, placed on the banks of the Vistula River in Warsaw.

Not necessarily this fall, mind you. For it is impossible to know for certain. If one were to attempt to pick a specific year, the logical choices would be one of the upcoming Jubilee years, 2018 (starting on Rosh Hashanah 2017 on the Gregorian calendar) or 2068, or the final year of the 6000 year Jewish Calendar, 2240.

Yet it could be tomorrow, or the next day, as Rosh Hashanah has the element of uncertainty as to precisely when the new moon occurs. This detail fits nicely with Jesus’s declaration that we would not know the day or time.

With all of the things that are happening in the world, many have begun to speculate that the end is nigh.

Clearly, the end is always nigh, and calamities such as the ones humanity is currently suffering have always taken place to some degree ever since mankind chose to disobey God and turn their back on their Creator.

Today, with billions of us on the planet, these calamities are multiplied to a staggering degree. The good news is that God’s grace and mercy are experienced in abundance as well, and this will overcome all suffering and calamity as He daily establishes His Kingdom within and amongst us.

Rosh Hashanah may be the most important and least observed/understood holiday for anyone who is not Jewish. However, what occurs over the next nine days will set the tone for the coming year. They occurrences are of such magnitude that the Jewish title, the “days of awe,” may be the only appropriate descriptor.

The following is an excerpt from our teaching last year on the sixth sign performed by Jesus that is recorded in the Gospel of John, which took place during this season some 2000 years ago.

Sukkot and the days of awe
Under these circumstances, Jesus announced that He would not attend the upcoming Feast of Booths (Tabernacles), or Sukkot, the Jewish Festival which follows Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, which was the holiest day of the year. Jesus’ initial reluctance to attend the Feast, and ultimate decision to attend, has great significance, both for our understanding of the sixth sign and for Jesus’ future second coming.
As you may recall, Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, marks a new beginning. The Jews believe that on this day the fate of each person for the upcoming year is written by YHWH in theBook of Life. The days (approximately 9) between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, known as the the days of awe, are spent in deep reflection, fasting, and prayer. It is a time of confession and repentance, it is a time of recognition that we are but dust, yet infinitely precious in YHWH’s sight.
The Jews believe that the fate which is written on Rosh Hashanah is then sealed by YHWH on Yom Kippur, at which point the Feast of Booths begins. It is our speculation that Jesus made the decision to ultimately attend the Feast of Booths to symbolically seal His fate. He would give His life for humanity on the upcoming Passover.
Yom Kippur is regarded as the Sabbath of Sabbaths, as such, it is only appropriate that the Jewish leaders who were looking for a reason to kill Him, would carefully observe Jesus in hopes of catching Him breaking their observance of the Sabbath.

As Rosh Hashanah begins, we hold fast to our faith, cleanse our minds and spirits, and resolve to love and forgive as God has loved and forgiven us. May this year be filled with a generous portion of wisdom and perspective, and the faith and courage to use it to fulfill our calling. The Messiah is coming, the trumpet is about to sound!

Is your lamp lit?

Events, Politics

On Racism – What Many White People do not understand

September 2, 2014 David Mint

9/2/2014 Portland, Oregon – Pop in your mints…

“Life in this country is inherently different for white people and black people”

The words of John Stewart of the Daily Show as he skillfully ripped apart biased portions of Fox’s coverage of the Michael Brown homicide ring true as a reminder that the mar of racism is still visible on the fabric of modern North American culture.

The events on August 9, 2014 in Ferguson Missouri will forever change how Americans of all races view the police and each other. In terms of one’s view of the police, Michael Brown’s death has served as a wakeup call that it is not ok for public servants to use deadly force on unarmed assailants. While we believe the right of civilians to self-defense must be held sacred, the police, who are paid by the public to serve the public, must be held to a higher standard. The job they are asked to do is an extremely difficult one, but they are well-trained and have any number of alternatives to deadly force available to them. For all members of society, deadly force must be used as an absolute last resort, not as the deterrent of choice as it would appear to have been for the policeman on the night Mr. Brown lost his life.

On Racism

Beyond the ever-present tension between the police and the public, the incident on August 9th has given pause for Americans to reflect on an issue that has been for the most part swept under the rug, racism.

While much has been said on the subject, we wish to interject an idea that we hope will impact you, not matter what color your skin may be, as much as it has impacted us: The concept of Equity

Equity

What is Equity and why is it important for understanding and removing the mar of racism from the Land of the Free? When it comes to dealing with racism, the definition of Equity is two-fold. Most white people in America understand and, in their better moments, are comfortable with the first:

1) Fairness of justice in the way people are treated

In many respects, the elevation and nearly universal recognition of this facet of the concept of Equity is the great achievement attributed to Martin Luther King, Jr. and the movement that he came to embody. It was enshrined into law in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and impacts nearly every aspect of public life in America. For most white people, passing and observing this law was enough to rectify the problem of racism.

However, this facet of the concept of Equity is merely a first step, as it is the second definition of Equity that must be addressed by America, for indeed if we do not, there is not another nation on earth that will pay more than lip service to it. It is this second definition that most White people do not understand, and when they do, tend to become extremely uncomfortable (image the Fox anchors in Stewart’s clip dealing with this one):

2) Justice according to natural law or right, specifically, freedom from bias or favoritism

You see, once racism has been acknowledged, it demands a just response. It is not enough to simply ensure that a spirit of fairness with regards to race is carried out from this point in time forward. To leave the issue there is to wash one’s hands of all of the past injustices that have been carried out in the name of racism.

If the mar of racism is to be cleansed from the American fabric once and for all, a concerted effort must be made, at least where public policy is concerned, to make amends, to the extent possible, for past injustices that have occurred. To many, it will appear to be favoritism, and indeed it is, but as a form of favoritism has been exercised for a great deal of time already, it is only logical that it would take years of reverse favoritism to even begin to rectify the past injustices.

Followed to its logical end, this facet of the concept of equity means that people of color should be disproportionately represented in the halls of power at all levels, they should be awarded government contracts in disproportionate fashion, and should be accorded the right to provide any other favors they may see expedient at the public’s expense in the same way that white people have done for as long as forms of government in the United States have existed.

Sound absurd? It may be, but it is just. Under this second facet, it would not be out of the question for certain white people to be enslaved for two generations or more just to even the score with the descendants of those whom their ancestors systematically denied the blessings of life, liberty, and happiness.

While it is difficult to imagine these “eye for an eye” types of reparations taking place in 2014, this has been the harsh reality for people of color for most of our nation’s history. Given the history, what, then, is the appropriate method of administering Justice with regards to racism?

The full concept of Equity, and the truth that it brings to light, is what most White people do not understand.

Conclusion

Here at The Mint, we understand that the government can do no good, as its very nature is to raise the most corrupt elements of society to the top and to steal and misappropriate resources, for by definition, it can do nothing more.

However, within the broken apparatus of public administration lies the means to achieve the full concept of Equity with regards to racism, and as long as it is in place, it has a duty to tip the scales of justice the way of those who have been disenfranchised because of the color of their skin.

While most persons in America would nod and agree with the first facet of the concept of equity, the second and more troubling facet is what most white people fail to understand. Like most things that actually cost something, many find it difficult to embrace once they do fully understand it.

We only happened upon it by chance, and it has forever changed the way we see the renewed discussion of race in this country. For it is the only way that America will be able to say, once and for all, that its fabric is truly free of the mar of racism. America is the only place that can hope to achieve Equity in a civilized and productive manner, and come out all the stronger for having fully embraced it.

Will we?

Stay tuned and Trust Jesus.

Stay Fresh!

David Mint

Key Indicators for September 2, 2014

Copper Price per Lb: $3.17
Oil Price per Barrel: $95.82

Corn Price per Bushel: $3.59
10 Yr US Treasury Bond: 2.34%
Bitcoin price in US: $479.44
FED Target Rate: 0.09%
Gold Price Per Ounce: $1,286

MINT Perceived Target Rate*: 0.25%
Unemployment Rate: 6.2%
Inflation Rate (CPI): 0.1%
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 17,098
M1 Monetary Base: $2,732,600,000,000

M2 Monetary Base: $11,406,000,000,000

Events

Notes on recent ISIS Advances in Iraq

August 15, 2014 David Mint

Once again the world is watching what is occurring in Iraq with shock, awe, and horror. As a public service, we have compiled the following links as a primer for those curious to know what is going on and why from those more knowledgeable than ourselves:

CNN Maps of Iraq Crisis:

Maps: Crisis in Iraq

Syrian/Middle East correspondent Matt Barber’s insightful Commentary on Yazidi flight:

IS Routs Peshmerga, Takes Control of Sinjar Mountains, Jeopardizes Yazidi Homeland

Stratfor’s always insightful analysis on the subject:

The Islamic State Tries to Ward Off U.S. Intervention in Iraq

With the world, we watch and pray for peace and prepare for contingencies.

Stay tuned and Trust Jesus.

Stay Fresh!

David Mint

Events, The Mint

The Greatest North American Holiday is Upon Us

November 28, 2013 David Mint

11/27/2013 Portland, Oregon – Pop in your mints…

Inflation in asset prices is beginning to appear at a breathtaking pace, and, while $1000 Bitcoins and 10% month over month increases in the London property market appear to scream “bubble,” the truth of the matter is that we are just getting starting. The Federal Reserve and every other Central Bank on the planet have given up on any sort of meaningful restraint, and there are Trillions of fiat currency units that are just looking for a reason to stir up what passes for economic activity circa 2013.

There will be plenty of time to watch numbers tick higher and even more plentiful opportunities to be had for ventures of all sorts in the weeks and months ahead. Today, we must pause, reflect, and give thanks.

For tomorrow is Thanksgiving.

"The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth" (1914) By Jennie A. Brownscombe — “The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth” (1914) By Jennie A. Brownscombe

Thanksgiving is the Greatest North American Holiday, for, in an age where most holiday traditions can be only dimly observed beyond the lights of commercialism, it is one of the few that most purely reflects its heritage.

And what a heritage it is. While the general idea of “Thanksgiving” has existed in religious and other faith centered communities from time immemorial, the Thanksgiving that we will celebrate tomorrow traces its origins to a three day feast held on the Plymouth Plantation in November of 1621, which was the culmination of a series miraculous events that came to pass for a group of Pilgrims who boarded the Mayflower in mid-July, 1620 and brave companions from the Speedwell who were determined to carry on despite the Speedwell springing a leak and being forced to turn back to England.

The Mayflower, like many ships of the day, was a trading ship, and the Pilgrims, who were English Dissenters (to give one an idea of conditions in England, Guy Fawkes Night had occurred a mere 15 years earlier, and religious tolerance was non-existent on the isles), were on their way to freedom having been financed by merchants eager to tap the riches of the New World.

The journey was perilous, and the storms in the North Atlantic took a heavy toll on the ship and its passengers. At least twice during the more difficult stages of the journey the idea of returning to England was debated. Frankly, anyone who has been on a journey that has become imperiled by weather conditions will understand the nature of such conversations.

The Mayflower, as we now know, pressed on and landed in the New World on November 11th, 1620. After a difficult journey, they had now arrived on land, and their true perils were about to begin.

After failing to find land suitable for a settlement, the advance party again boarded the Mayflower and sailed down to what is now known as Plymouth Rock, where they found an area that was ideal for both settlement and agriculture. As it turns out, the Patuxent tribe had inhabited this land until a plague wiped out all but one of its members just four years earlier.

The surviving member of the Patuxent tribe was named Squanto, and he was to play a key role in making the first Thanksgiving possible.

In November of 1620, the Pilgrims set about the first order of business to be tended to before the winter would set in, building a common house (in what turned out to be our own strange homage to this event, we spent today racing against the winter rains to complete a tree house/play structure/deck in our backyard).

Over the winter and early spring, 49 of the 101 who had made the journey on the Mayflower (during the journey, two perished at sea and one baby was born) had perished, and the prospects for the coming spring were grim, as there were now just 20 adults and 30 children.

It was then that a series of miracles began to occur.

First, a Native American named Samoset, who spoke English well enough to communicate, came to the settlement to welcome the Pilgrims. Samoset then went to get Squanto, who was at first hesitant to come near to the settlement, as he had been captured and sold into slavery twice by English ships prior to this encounter. However, he had been observing this group of Englishmen and found them to be quite different than the others.

{Editor’s Note: You can read a bit more of Squanto’s fascinating story here.}

Squanto taught the Pilgrims how to grow corn and other key survival tactics to the new inhabitants of his native land, who he now called his people. He then brought Massasoit, the chief of the Wampanoag and the leader of the tribes of the region. Massasoit provided foodstuffs to the Pilgrims and agreed to a peace treaty with them that would last for 50 years.

With the aid of the Native Americans, the Pilgrims survived and, in the fall of 1621, had a bountiful harvest. They declared a feast of Thanksgiving that lasted for three days and was attended by Massasoit and 90 other Natives. It was a feast of Biblical proportions in the sense that it was a true tithe, where the first fruits of the season were brought together and enjoyed by all in the community.

Massasoit and governor John Carver smoking a peace pipe

And the rest, for better and for worse, is history.

Thanksgiving is a time to celebrate the miracles that occur in the lives of each and every one of us. It is a time to reflect upon the people and the providence that have provided for us in miraculous ways throughout the year.

For each circumstance in which we live is a miracle simply because it is, and our lives are tapestries that are woven together by the Creator of such awe inspiring beauty that any difficulties encountered along the way simply pale in comparison to the whole.

Thanksgiving is a time to step back and celebrate this tapestry with the Creator, and, when contemplated along with the abundance that fills our lives if we would only pause, reflect, and open our eyes, join together with our loved ones and all of humanity, lifting songs of praise and Thanksgiving to the Father of us all.

As it was at Plymouth in the fall of 1621, so let it be with us tomorrow, for it is what our present circumstances call for each and every day.

Happy Thanksgiving

Stay tuned and Trust Jesus.

Stay Fresh!

David Mint

Email: davidminteconomics@gmail.com

Key Indicators for November 27, 2013

Copper Price per Lb: $3.18
Oil Price per Barrel: $92.25

Corn Price per Bushel: $4.17
10 Yr US Treasury Bond: 2.75%
Mt Gox Bitcoin price in US: $1,067.29
FED Target Rate: 0.09% ON AUTOPILOT, THE FED IS DEAD!
Gold Price Per Ounce: $1,238

MINT Perceived Target Rate*: 0.25%
Unemployment Rate: 7.3%
Inflation Rate (CPI): -0.1%
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 16,097
M1 Monetary Base: $2,516,700,000,000

M2 Monetary Base: $10,921,000,000,000

Bible Teaching, Events, Jesus, Rapture

Its Rosh Hashanah 5774, is your lamp lit?

September 4, 2013 David Mint

Today marks the beginning of the Jewish high holiday Rosh Hashanah, a celebration of the new year, a celebration of the creation of the world.

We are convinced that the Messiah, Jesus, is returning. We are equally convinced that it has not been given to any man to know the exact time of his return.

In fact, based on the timing of His death and resurrection, the Passover, we believe that His triumphant return will logically take place over Rosh Hashanah. The celebrated Feast of Trumpets.

With all of the things that are happening in the world, many have begun to speculate that the end is nigh.

Rosh Hashanah may be the most important and least observed/understood holiday for anyone who is not Jewish. However, what occurs over the next nine days will set the tone for the coming year. They occurances are of such magnitude that the Jewish title, the “days of awe,” may be the only appropriate descriptor.

The following is an excerpt from our teaching last year on the sixth sign performed by Jesus that is recorded in the Gospel of John, which took place during this season some 2000 years ago.

Sukkot and the days of awe
Under these circumstances, Jesus announced that He would not attend the upcoming Feast of Booths (Tabernacles), or Sukkot, the Jewish Festival which follows Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, which was the holiest day of the year. Jesus’ initial reluctance to attend the Feast, and ultimate decision to attend, has great significance, both for our understanding of the sixth sign and for Jesus’ future second coming.
As you may recall, Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, marks a new beginning. The Jews believe that on this day the fate of each person for the upcoming year is written by YHWH in the Book of Life. The days (approximately 9) between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, known as the the days of awe, are spent in deep reflection, fasting, and prayer. It is a time of confession and repentance, it is a time of recognition that we are but dust, yet infinitely precious in YHWH’s sight.
The Jews believe that the fate which is written on Rosh Hashanah is then sealed by YHWH on Yom Kippur, at which point the Feast of Booths begins. It is our speculation that Jesus made the decision to ultimately attend the Feast of Booths to symbolically seal His fate. He would give His life for humanity on the upcoming Passover.
Yom Kippur is regarded as the Sabbath of Sabbaths, as such, it is only appropriate that the Jewish leaders who were looking for a reason to kill Him, would carefully observe Jesus in hopes of catching Him breaking their observance of the Sabbath.

As Rosh Hashanah begins, we hold fast to our faith, cleanse our minds and spirits, and resolve to love and forgive as God has loved and forgiven us. The Messiah is coming, the trumpet is about to sound!

Is your lamp lit?

Events, Politics

Obama Punts Syria to Congress, will Congress Vote to Stimulate the Stock Market?

September 3, 2013 David Mint

As we stated before, what is currently occurring in Syria has serious implications for all of humanity, and with the weight of the world on his shoulders. Obama has chosen to do what any self-respecting statesman, circa 2013, would do. Mr. Obama has punted the question as to whether or not the United States should intervene via military action to the US Congress, who, it would appear, have been pulled away from their leisurely summer pursuits in an effort to inform themselves on the situation before they cast a vote on the matter.

What will they decide? The world is holding its breath in anticipation of the outcome of this latest political charade. For most thinking people, the answer is clear, the US should avoid a conflict that will not only trigger a series of inevitable side shows which are sure to include standoffs with China, Russia, and Iran, complete with Israeli sabre rattling in the background, but will most surely further bankrupt a government which has operated in the red without a budget, let alone a clear foreign policy, for five years running.

Fortunately for investors and unfortunately for the Syrian public and the world at large, the US Congress is not renowned for its thoughtfulness in such matters. While the British MPs took the high road and have prohibited their fearless leader from committing to military intervention, we would expect the US Congress to reluctantly authorize the use of force holding up an ambiguous “moral obligation” as the ultimate reason they have chosen to reluctantly order a military intervention.

Moral arguments aside, war, like zero bound interest rates and quantitative easing, is good for stocks and moneylenders and bad for everybody else involved. Should the US Congress authorize military intervention in Syria in their upcoming vote on the matter, we anticipate a short-term dip in equities, perhaps only a few days, which will present a tremendous buying opportunity.

The situation in Syria is lamentable and a blight on the basic humanity of us all. It is also a powder keg that threatens to further destabilize, were it possible, the fragile Middle East. Should the powder keg go off, equity values are likely to rise dramatically in the medium term against the backdrop of a widespread military conflict.

Unfortunately, price levels for everyday goods will rise even faster. While we hope for a no vote, it would be wise to anticipate a yes vote and plan accordingly.

Key Indicators for September 2, 2013

Copper Price per Lb: $3.27
Oil Price per Barrel: $107.03
Corn Price per Bushel: $4.95
10 Yr US Treasury Bond: 2.75%

Mt Gox Bitcoin price in US: $144.00

FED Target Rate: 0.08% ON AUTOPILOT, THE FED IS DEAD!
Gold Price Per Ounce: $1,396
MINT Perceived Target Rate*: 0.25%
Unemployment Rate: 7.4%
Inflation Rate (CPI): 0.2%
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 14,810
M1 Monetary Base: $2,497,600,000,000
M2 Monetary Base: $10,693,300,000,00

Education, Events, Peaceful Resistance

Malala Yousafzai addresses the UN as a 16 year old peacemaker

July 13, 2013 David Mint

Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl who survived a vicious attack by Taliban gunmen as she and her friends attempted to exercise their right to go to school, was given the opportunity of a lifetime yesterday as she addressed a youth delegation at the United Nations’ general assembly room on her 16th birthday. Her address to the UN, which can be seen below in its entirety, will go down as one of the greatest in recent memory.

Many in the West will no doubt be stricken by the fact that there are places in the world where girls are not allowed to attend school even when the facilities exist. We were stricken for a different reason: Malala is not only one who has stood up for educational rights, she is a 16 year old peacemaker.

In the speech she cites Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and others as her inspiration to pursue peaceful methods of protest. In doing so, she has become a living example of two truths:

That violence is a symptom of cowardice, and that the peacemakers shall be called the children of God.

Events, Jesus, The Mint

A New Season is Upon the Earth

July 11, 2013 David Mint

7/11/2013 Portland, Oregon – Pop in your mints…

The summer is in full swing here in the Northwest. We have recently sent the manuscript for our mini treatise off to perhaps the only publisher that aligns ideologically with its many and varied themes; Laissez Faire Books.

As we await a response, we are directing our creative energies into the construction of a playground/deck/Gaudi-esque structure upon some otherwise idle ground near the back of the property. As someone who stares at screens for a living, wielding a circular saw and power screwdriver is nothing short of exhilarating.

There is something about creating something from nothing that brings with it a contentment only those who have done it can explain. It is to work outside the confines of time and space while at the same time yielding to their limitations. In the best of moments, it brings us closer to the divine.

In addition to our power tool therapy, we have been seeking funding for a number of projects that have come across our radar. While our efforts to this point have been categorically unsuccessful, we have a feeling that is about to change. We have had the feeling that things are about to break loose for some time now.

Yesterday, this feeling was confirmed in the most unexpected of settings, a Board Finance Committee. In the middle of the meeting, as we were punting around various ideas and cost savings measures, a prophet came in and declared a new season had come upon the world, a season in which the plans of Yahweh, those that have been stayed for various reasons, would now come to pass. That the righteous would have resources thrust into their hands. This season began in early July.

With that, all discussion ceased and we simply came into agreement in prayer over the matter as a Committee, and the meeting was adjourned. It was the most unique committee meeting we have ever attended.

It must be said that there is great relief in prayer. While simply praying is no guarantee that funds will appear or that plans will come to pass, it is a guarantee that the matter is firmly in Yahweh’s hands, leaving the outcome, whatever it may be, a victory for the Kingdom of Heaven.

In other words, prayer brings peace, and in this case the confirmation of a notion that The Lord has laid upon us for the past six months. A new season in the spiritual realm has arrived.

It is crucial that we open our eyes, or we shall remain blind. This was made clear to us in a vision we had yesterday (yes, visions are returning as well!) in which we saw a field and a man standing at the end of it. The man was looking through a field of vision that allowed him to see a mere 1% of the immense richness of the land in front of him.

This represented the blindness inherent in seeking answers in numbers, which provides one a viewpoint that is 1% reality and 99% fiction. If we can learn to see past the 1% and step forward into the field before us, the 99%, the abundance of Yahweh’s supply for us, appears as if out of nowhere…yet it has been there all along.

Such is the blindness of those who decide based on numbers alone, for the numbers are at best, a trailing indication of words, decisions, and actions long past. At worst, they are a stumbling block and a snare. For renewal an growth to take place, there must be a complete separation from the current concept of money and the reality of the natural world. This separation is just now beginning to take place.

Finally, we are also making preparations for our long delayed annual journey to Bolivia, where we hope to advance a project that has long been on our hearts:

The Night John the Baptist Died

Stay tuned and Trust Jesus!

Stay Fresh!

David Mint

Email: davidminteconomics@gmail.com

Key Indicators for July 11, 2013

Copper Price per Lb: $3.16
Oil Price per Barrel: $104.63
Corn Price per Bushel: $7.16
10 Yr US Treasury Bond: 2.57%
Mt Gox Bitcoin price in US: $86.90
FED Target Rate: 0.09% ON AUTOPILOT, THE FED IS DEAD!
Gold Price Per Ounce: $1,286
MINT Perceived Target Rate*: 0.25%
Unemployment Rate: 7.6%
Inflation Rate (CPI): 0.1%
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 15,461
M1 Monetary Base: $2,623,800,000,000
M2 Monetary Base: $10,629,300,000,000

Economics, Events, Financial Advice, Politics, The Mint

Cyprus – The Waterloo of Eurocratic management or the ultimate catalyst for Euro zone growth?

March 18, 2013 David Mint

3/18/2013 Portland, Oregon – Pop in your mints…

While the management of the ongoing banking crises on this side of the Atlantic has been dishonest, the management on the other side of the pond, or in today’s case, sea, has been an unmitigated disaster. Or so it would seem.

We are talking about Cyprus. For those who have yet to hear about Cyprus, it is an island nation located in the far eastern Mediterranean Sea, just below Turkey. It is currently inhabited by a fiery mix of Greeks and Turks, who have lived in an uneasy peace with each other for some 40 years after the events that took place during the summer of 1974.

Like many island nations, Cyprus has been able to find common ground with those who have been unable to find common ground on the mainland. It has found that it can leverage its sovereignty and willingness to bend the rules to offer banking services without the nagging regulations which increasingly plague banks and their clients in the Western nations on the mainland.

Now that the government of Cyprus is bankrupt and in need of a bailout, showing that even a tax and banking paradise can be poisoned by a bad currency, they have gone hat in hand to Belgium, a strange country in the north with absolutely nothing in common with Cyprus, save the currency in question.

The Eurocratic apparatus in Belgium, either on its own or at the behest of the global banking giants in Cyprus, has decided that the terms of the bailout, or “bail in”, which is the Euro friendly way to say “Corralito,” {Editor’s Note: Corralito is the Argentinean term for when the Government decides to unilaterally make use of the funds in its country’s banks to fund the government because there is literally no one willing to lend them currency on any terms}, would be the direct confiscation of funds from depositors bank accounts in the form of a tax, in this case between 3 and 9.9% (because 10% just looks bad in print) to ultimately pay back the countries who have been generous enough to provide the funds, which, despite the technicalities involved, for most Europeans means Germany.

Predictably, the people of Cyprus, who caught wind of the confirmation of the rumors on Friday and awoke Monday to find that their government had declared what is, at this writing, an indefinite banking holiday (meaning banks and ATMs are closed) to prevent anyone who did not want to participate in the bail in from withdrawing their funds from the country’s banks, are channeling their anger at the German Embassy, quite naturally:

Henry Blodget has written a decent analysis on the details of the Cyprus bail in over at the Daily Ticker. Blodget does a good job of analyzing the events up until the point where He presumes:

“…the moment depositors think that there is risk to their savings, they rush to banks to yank their money out.
That’s called a run on the bank.
And since no bank anywhere has enough cash on hand to pay off all its depositors at once, runs on the bank cause banks to go bust.
That’s what happened to hundreds of banks in the Great Depression.
And it’s what happened to Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and other huge banks during the financial crisis (though, with Bear and Lehman, the folks who yanked their money out weren’t mom and pop depositors but other big financial institutions). It’s what threatened to bring the entire U.S. financial system to its knees. And it’s why the U.S. and European governments have been frantically bailing out banks ever since.
But now, thanks to the eurozone’s bizarre decision in Cyprus, the illusion that depositors don’t need to yank their money out of threatened banks because they’ll be protected has been shattered.”

What Blodget presumes is that a bank run is bad for the bank. Here at The Mint, we postulate that this tax on depositors is taken precisely for the benefit of the Cypriot banks. Further, it has been taken not only for the benefit of the banks in Cypriot, but to serve as the catalyst for the Euro zone to return to growth, or the activities which pass as economic growth circa 2013.

How can this be? To understand this will take a basic understanding of the banking revenue model.

Ever since 2008, the Federal Reserve and the ECB have been underwriting the banking sector by providing cheap cash to banks and, indirectly, the governments and people’s of their respective countries. This is where Blodget’s parallel of today’s bank runs and those that occurred during the Great Depression falls apart. For all of the mistakes that Ben Bernanke has made, the unconditional guarantee of liquidity in the banking system is the one that he will never relinquish, despite appeals to reason, for he mysteriously sees it as his life’s calling.

However, in an effort to stem the fall in asset prices, which is largely a product of the insane “jack the rate 25 basis points every month or so” policy that the Greenspan and Bernanke Fed followed from June 2004 until June 2006, the policy that caused markets to seize up like a car engine losing oil as they accelerated to record speeds, the Feds and the ECB have largely ignited an increase not in economic growth, but in bank deposits.

Bank deposits, far from being a boon to the receiving bank, are a huge problem when market conditions force them to reinvest (read lend out) those funds for rates that are unconscionably low (3.75% to consumers for 30 years, in a fiat currency system, are you out of your mind?). Making matters worse, the consumers have been slow to take the bait, resulting in a big time squeeze on the traditional banking revenue model.

Enter Cyprus, an island that holds a disproportionate amount of bank deposits. As a thinking Eurocrat, of which we suspect there are few, save Nile Farage, who is hunting for a way to both ensure that the banking revenue model continues to function, the government of Cyprus retains legitimacy, and that economic activity in the Euro zone will increase, the pile of Euros in Cypriot banks looks like a great target not to loot, as most analysis of the situation will paint this move as, but to force billions of Euros out of the digital vaults of the banking system to wash from the shores of Cyprus outwards into the other Euro zone countries in search of real goods, not simply another cash warehouse.

One sees the Eurocratic genius in the move at the moment one (again, that is you and I, fellow taxpayer) understands that the mere threat of a unilateral tax on deposits as a condition for a Euro zone bailout is causing lines to form at ATMs from Andalu to Cataluña, across the border into Torino and down to the lonely parts of Sicily.

Cyprus Flag — Will the Cyprus Misadventure by the catalyst for elusive economic growth in the Euro zone?

Within a matter of days, billions of Euros which were locked up in the accounts of villainous savers and otherwise useless to the European economy will be running around the Spanish and Italian streets in a desperate attempt to purchase anything real in which to hold said savings.

With what appears to have been a typically boneheaded Eurocratic move, the Eurocrats may have managed to do what Ben Bernanke and all of the helicopters in the world could not have done to the club Med economies: Shower them with foolishly spent cash while at the same time bailing out both the banks and the governments as a grotesque side effect.

To be sure, it is a short term fix and will leave the Euro zone further down the scorched earth economy path in a matter of years. Even so, you have to give the Eurocrats some credit for pulling out all the stops, even if they did stumble upon their ultimate stimulus, which relies upon their own stupidity to function, completely by accident.

Meanwhile in Cyprus, the latest is that the government wants to “think over” the terms of the bailout. The formal vote has been postponed until Friday, and we presume that the banking holiday will remain in effect until after the vote is taken and any taxes are skimmed.

It is a hard assignment, and we do not envy them nor blame them for thinking it over. The decision before Cyprus’ government officials is simple. Should they accept the bailout, they face being blamed by their countrymen for sacrificing their parched island on the Eurocratic altar as well as spending the rest of their lives dodging the hit men of any oligarch’s who did not have sufficient forewarning of the move.

Should they reject the bailout, their government may even find a few contributions from said oligarchs to keep operating, and the only cost will be a few less German tourists on their shores, which, given the alternative, seems a small price to pay.

In the end, if our hunch is correct, the mere threat of corallito should be enough to stimulate the Euro zone.

Were we in their shoes, and we are glad we are not, we would reject the bailout. Either way, it is a strong argument for exiting the formal banking system or becoming a large net creditor. It is much easier for “crats” of any stripe to confiscate assets with a few keystrokes than for them to lift a finger to grab something in the real world.

Stay tuned and Trust Jesus.

Stay Fresh!

David Mint

Email: davidminteconomics@gmail.com

Key Indicators for March 18, 2013 (PM)

Copper Price per Lb: $3.43
Oil Price per Barrel: $93.79
Corn Price per Bushel: $7.20
10 Yr US Treasury Bond: 1.96%
FED Target Rate: 0.15% ON AUTOPILOT, THE FED IS DEAD!
Gold Price Per Ounce: $1,606 THE GOLD RUSH IS STILL ON!
MINT Perceived Target Rate*: 0.25%
Unemployment Rate: 7.7%
Inflation Rate (CPI): 0.7%
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 14,452
M1 Monetary Base: $2,466,100,000,000 LOTS OF DOUGH ON THE STREET!
M2 Monetary Base: $10,499,300,000,000

Economics, Events, Spain, The Mint

Adios Pesetas: A look back at adoption of the Euro in Spain

March 18, 2013 David Mint

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3/18/2013 Portland, Oregon – Pop in your mints…

The following is an essay written by a dear friend of ours, Tom Baker, in February of 2002. Tom and his wife have lived in the region of Catalunya for a number of years. His observations regarding the currency transition which was about to take place in Spain from pesetas to the full adoption of the Euro may prove timely if and when a similar event takes place in your locale. Enjoy!

Adios pesetas

A major milestone has come to Europe with the introduction of the common currency known as euros. Actually the Economic Union of 12 countries (Trivia question–can you name the 12 countries? answer below) has been on the euro standard for the last 2 years, with exchange rates fixed permanently between the currencies of the member countries. Everyone was really using euros, but they just looked different in each country.

Now in the last month, the last major hurdle has been addressed with the withdrawal of all local currencies from circulation, and their replacement with euro coins and bills. Think of the problems involved in changing the currency of 12 countries (approximately the size of the US) with 12 different monetary systems simultaneously.

Prices for goods have been posted in both pesetas and euros in the larger stores for the last year to accustom people to thinking in euros. It isn’t easy-we have gotten used to valuing items in pesetas, and even though the euro is close to a dollar in value, that hasn’t helped much. So it must be worse for those that have lived with pesetas all their lives.

The schedule is for 2 months of dual circulation, with only euros after that. Now for some details of the tactics used. Most cash registers are electronic and have been reprogrammed to handle both currencies. Banks had kits of euro coins available in December for their customers so people could start getting used to the feel and appearance, but they could not be used until Jan 1.

The big change-over day (Jan 1) was of course very quiet, the major change being that most cash machines only dispensed euro bills. Then the tactic to force the change-over was that customers could pay in either currency, but always received their change in euros. So all the stores were sucking pesetas out of circulation.

It was a bit chaotic in the first week, with small merchants having to do the conversions on calculators. Lots of mistakes were made, lots of people were confused, but the pesetas were disappearing briskly. A few operations had problems with machines that accept coins, especially the toll roads. So they decided to shut down the automatic coin machines until the conversion period is over, giving them time to convert them to euros. If you want to pay cash, you have to give it to a human operator, otherwise use a credit card for automatic payment.

The use of credit cards in general was encouraged to reduce the demand for change initially. There were some shortages of coins, especially when the big traditional sales kicked in on Jan 8. Now after a month of usage, the euros are seeming more natural and the prices are starting to make sense. Pesetas have disappeared-all transactions are in euros now.

[A cartoon that I saw showed a bank robber at the counter, and the cashier asked if the transaction would be in pesetas or euros].

In our house, and I’m sure in most others, there was a sweep to collect all the pesetas and get them spent. Then you find another coat pocket with a handful of coins, plus an envelope with French francs, another with Italian lira, etc. There are cans with slots in all the banks for those last few stray pesetas to help children around the world. We’re going to haul our francs to France for one last meal there before the pumpkin-hour. The lira we sent with friends that are visiting Italy.

If you are holding on to European currency, send it to me immediately :-). No, just kidding, but you do need to change it. Bills you should be able to change at major banks until March 1 when all local currencies will disappear; after that you will have to change the money at the state bank in the country of the currency. They predict that at least a third of the currencies will never be turned in. That is pure gravy for the governments.

A side effect of the change-over is its effect on black money. Spain and other areas of Europe have a sizeable underground economy, with all transactions in cash, not reported to the government for tax purposes. Now some people are stuck with bundles of currency that will soon be unusable. So the sales of luxury items skyrocketed in December, especially expensive cars.

Also there seemed to be a lot of money being poured into new construction, and housing prices have risen dramatically in the last year. We will see if they subside in the coming year. The government has promised to look into suspicious purchases of luxury items. There were reports of Germans hauling carloads of marks into Switzerland.

On your next trip to Europe, you will find things much easier, with only one currency to carry unless you visit England, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, or Norway. I wonder how much this will affect tourism into these countries?

The last thought is the number of colloquial sayings that will disappear from the language. “No vale ni un peseta” = “It’s not worth even a peseta”. The common words used for money were duros (5 pesetas, or like a nickel), and pelas (1 peseta). These will disappear.

Euro coins:

1, 2, 5 Cents, Centims, Centimos-Copper colored
10, 20, 50 Cents-Gold colored
1, 2 Euros-Gold outer band, silver inner section

The “front” side of each coin is unique to each country, while the “back” side is common to all.

Euro Bills: 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, 500

Euro countries: Spain, Portugal, Ireland, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Greece, Holland, Luxemburg, Belgium, Finland

We wish to thank Tom for allowing us to share his essay with you, our fellow taxpayers. It is both an interesting, first hand look at a significant event in the history of world currencies as well as an instructive guide as to how one may prepare and what to expect should the monetary authorities in your locale choose to swap their existing national currencies for some flavor of supranational currency, such as the Euro.

At the time the Euro was adopted, it appeared to have a number of benefits for the adherents despite the minor inconveniences and sometimes painful price adjustments (we are told that the typical café, which before the Euro went for 100 pelas (see above) was immediately repriced up to a round 1 Euro (roughly 162 pesetas), an instant 62% increase) that were experienced in its adoption.

Now, some eleven years later, five of the countries on the above list have experienced significant economic distress, while others teeter on the fine line between growth and solvency.

It is important to note, however, that the countries that are now in distress experienced substantial economic booms related to the Euro adoption. Their governments were allowed to borrow at rates which were aided by the strength of their European neighbor’s finances and, as Tom pointed out, the Central Banks made a windfall profit on the quasi confiscation of nearly 1/3 of the currency in circulation.

Was it worth it? In terms of currency history, 11 years is a bit too soon to make a call, but either way, we have a feeling that a similar sort of currency “consolidation” awaits many in the not too distant future. It will not be some sort of conspiracy, as many believe, but simply an attempt by the desperate governments of the world to shore up their ailing finances.

It will ultimately fail, but that time may be farther off than it seems.

Stay tuned and Trust Jesus.

Stay Fresh!

David Mint

Email: davidminteconomics@gmail.com

Key Indicators for March 18, 2013

Copper Price per Lb: $3.51
Oil Price per Barrel: $93.21
Corn Price per Bushel: $7.16
10 Yr US Treasury Bond: 2.01%
FED Target Rate: 0.14% ON AUTOPILOT, THE FED IS DEAD!
Gold Price Per Ounce: $1,596 THE GOLD RUSH IS STILL ON!
MINT Perceived Target Rate*: 0.25%
Unemployment Rate: 7.7%
Inflation Rate (CPI): 0.7%
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 14,496
M1 Monetary Base: $2,466,100,000,000 LOTS OF DOUGH ON THE STREET!
M2 Monetary Base: $10,499,300,000,000

Events

On Beards and the Venezuela that was

March 6, 2013 David Mint

3/6/2013 Portland, Oregon – Pop in your mints…

Whether you loved him, hated him, or had no idea who he was, it is undeniable that Hugo Chávez changed Venezuela forever. As the former democratically elected dictator of Venezuela is laid to rest, we can’t help but wonder, would he still be alive today had he worn a beard?

Yes, you read that correctly. Today, at the Mint, we are reflecting on what, on the surface, appears to be a mere personal preference with regards to facial hair. What does it matter that Chávez wore a beard or not? For that matter, what does it matter whether or not any man chooses to wear a beard?

Pondering the natural beauty of the Northern Venezuelan Coast

The answer lies in what the beard tells us, indirectly, about the level of stress that the man is experiencing. Hugo Chávez, from what we understand, did not wear a beard. Was his lack of facial hair an expression of his perpetually paranoid behavior? Fidel Castro, who wears one of the more recognizable beards on the globe, and whom Chávez recognized as at least a political father figure, has lived a good long life despite facing political pressures and mortal dangers similar to those that Chávez faced.

Castro's Beard — Fidel Castro’s unmistakable beard, the hallmark of a confident, relaxed dictator.

It may be a stretch to say that growing a beard will lead to lower overall stress levels which, in theory, should translate into longer life spans. However, it is not a stretch to postulate, as we do today, that the a man who wears a beard is generally experiencing lower stress levels than his smooth faced peers.

While we generally disagree with socialism and large scale government, especially one that gives dictatorial powers to one or a handful of human beings, we admire Chávez for giving lip service to justice for the poor, even if he did use his position to amass a reported $2 billion nest egg. We also admire his anti-imperialist stance, which became his hallmark. While the hypocrisy of railing against imperialism and then using one’s own position of authority to exercise imperial like control over a land mass is not lost on this author, Chávez filled the lives of many with joy and laughter.

If only he had worn a beard, he may still be alive to see the destruction that his socialist policies will bring.

Chávez’s death leaves Evo Morales as the heir apparent to Castro. Will Evo rise to the occasion? If he does, we recommend that he begin by growing a beard, if not literally, then figuratively, and preoccupy himself with relaxation. Socialism requires charismatic father figures that live good long lives.

If, on the other hand, Evo desires to truly work to improve the lot of his countrymen, we offer our open letter to his Excellency, along with advice to grow a beard, as a roadmap for governance and a long and good life. In his own words, “vivir bien.”

Speaking of vivir bien, We were fortunate to visit Venezuela in 1997, about a year before Chávez took office. We had been invited by our best friend’s adventurous parents to adventure with them on their sailboat, the Lady Jane. You can see a few select pictures of the journey interlaced

In November of that year, they found themselves tied off at a slip in an upscale marina in Barcelona on Venezuela’s Caribbean coast. Their previous sailboat, which had been stationed in the Bahamas, had been wrecked in a hurricane a couple of years before and in order to get their new boat insured they were required to be out of the hurricane belt during the high season.

This condition had lead them to sail for Venezuela, and they had found a miniature paradise. They invited four of us to join them for a vacation.

The trip was unforgettable. After a heart stopping ride from the airport in Caracas, through the jungle to Barcelona in the middle of the night, we acclimated ourselves to the refreshingly slow pace of life at the Marina. We dedicated a bit of time to learning to scuba dive as well as the ins and outs of life as a cruiser, which involves taking short trips in a dinghy, fumigating shower facilities before use, and learning to vomit downwind when the battering of the waves against the tiny ship becomes too much.

Pristine rock formations of the Los Roques Archipelago in the Carribean

One incident which remains etched in our memory is a visit to a local night club. After partaking of a few Polars, the national beverage, we were enjoying the night with perhaps two hundred other revelers when men in fatigues, armed with AK47s began to surround the open air night club.

Polar, the national beverage of Venezuela

We froze, yet took comfort in the fact that most around us continued dancing and buying drinks as the troops approached. What happened next was terrifying.

The soldiers separated us by sex and made us line up. One by one, we passed through what amounted to a makeshift checkpoint. As we stood in line, we realized that, being the wise traveler that we were, we had left our passport safely back at the Marina. As we approached the soldiers, we offered the only piece of ID we had, our wrinkled up, sweaty visitors visa.

The soldier took it, gave it a confused stare, and returned it to us as we walked on by.

As the shock began to wear off, we realized that we had been subjected to a simple ID check.

We continued to enjoy the night, if not the rest of the trip, in a sober state. This is how the police worked in South America. It was something unheard of in the US circa 1997.

We soon sailed off to Los Roques Archipelago and a couple of other deserted isles which are every bit as beautiful in person as they are in pictures. It wasn’t The Cove of DiCaprio fame, but in ways it resembled it.

We took port again in Bonaire, which has no fresh water, where the water tank has the words “a gallon of water is more valuable than gold” emblazoned on the sides. We had imported Polar ourselves and watched as our friend’s Father and Captain did the duty of presenting our passports to the port authority, something that was an entirely new concept for us.

We relished island life and our new found scuba talents for a time before returning via Curacao to Caracas and then on home, thoroughly impressed and intimidated by the beauty that was Venezuela and the surrounding isles.

Shortly thereafter, Chávez became President, and from what we understand, Venezuela has not been the same since.

Yet we have been left to wonder during our sober reflections on that trip, was it Chávez, or the visitation of six weary sailors that fateful season that forever altered the fate of this happy south american country?

Perhaps we will never know.

Stay tuned and Trust Jesus.

Stay Fresh!

David Mint

Email: davidminteconomics@gmail.com

Key Indicators for March 6, 2013

Copper Price per Lb: $3.48
Oil Price per Barrel: $90.46
Corn Price per Bushel: $7.08
10 Yr US Treasury Bond: 1.94%
FED Target Rate: 0.16% ON AUTOPILOT, THE FED IS DEAD!
Gold Price Per Ounce: $1,585 THE GOLD RUSH IS STILL ON!
MINT Perceived Target Rate*: 0.25%
Unemployment Rate: 7.9%
Inflation Rate (CPI): 0.0%
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 14,296
M1 Monetary Base: $2,421,800,000,000 LOTS OF DOUGH ON THE STREET!
M2 Monetary Base: $10,412,400,000,000

The Mint

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Fresh ideas on Economics, Monetary Theory, Politics, and Less Pressing but Equally Entertaining Matters for the English and Spanish speaking worlds