Category Archives: Poetry

It is Christmas, God created a Child

12/24/2013 Portland, Oregon – Pop in your mints…

It is Christmas, God Created a Child – A Christmas Poem inspired by a revelation given to Bettie Mitchell regarding why God saved humankind in the most unusual manner that we celebrate during Christmas.

 

It is Christmas, God Created a Child

It is Christmas,

a babe in a manger lay,

Why has He come?

The reason of the mystery revealed.

"Adoration of the Shepherds" by Gerard van Honthorst, 1622
“Adoration of the Shepherds” by Gerard van Honthorst, 1622

 

In the beginning,

God created them, man, then woman,

What would they do?

He walked with them in the garden.

 

 

 

Their betrayal,

broke His heart, and He sent them away,

with a gift of clothing,

the first sacrifice, but not the last.

 

 

God left them,

He pondered what went wrong,

and how to make it right again.

He watched them from afar, as a nervous parent.

 

 

 

He watched,

as they conceived and bore children,

outside of the garden,

the results were disastrous, murder, betrayal

 

 

 

He sent a flood,

to destroy them all, to wipe the earth clean,

for the earth was innocent,

He wrestled with the implications, and saw Noah.

 

 

 

He would allow them to live,

Abraham confirmed what he saw in Noah,

Humankind still loved Him,

Yet they were so evil, how could He come close?

 

 

 

Then it came to Him,

Like a muse from below, for in the beginning,

In the garden,

They were perfect, they were His, and they were adults.

 

 

 

He would create a child,

not cursed, as those outside of the garden,

but perfect,

As Adam and Eve were, in the beginning

 

 

 

He inhaled,

and breathed life into the darkness,

it was perfect,

They must see how to live, from cradle to grave, our perfect union

 

 

 

The perfect end,

The only way to blot out, the transgression in the garden,

for in the beginning,

it was good.

 

 

 

The baby arrived,

to teach us how to live, and take the punishment,

once and for all,

to perfect the creation and human hearts.

 

 

 

His will be done,

His Kingdom come, then, now, and forever more,

God created a child,

at Christmas, to make things right.

 

 

God created a child.

Merry Christmas!

Stay tuned and Trust Jesus.

Stay Fresh!

What the World Needs Now is Anarchy

We send you into the weekend here at The Mint with a brutal rendition of a sixties classic. Enjoy!
To the tune of “What the World Needs Now is Love

What the World Needs Now is Anarchy

(With apologies to the Dionne Warwick and the more than 100 other artists who have previously crooned this wonderful tune)

What the world needs now is an-ar-chy,
It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.
What the world needs now is an-ar-chy,
no not just for some but for everyone.

Lord we don’t need another government,
There are governments and governors enough to rule,
There are rules and regulations enough to obey
Enough to make us all look like fools

What the world needs now is an-ar-chy ,
it’s the only thing that theres just too little of,
what the world needs now is an-ar-chy ,
no not just for some but for everyone

Lord, we dont need another lawman,
there is justice and kindness enough to give,
there is honor and duty in every heart,
If only we’d be left alone, to live and let live

What the world needs now is an-ar-chy ,
its the only thing that theres just too little of.
what the world needs now is an-ar-chy,
no not just for some, oh but just for every every everyone.

what the world (whoa whoa) needs now,
is an-ar-chy
what the world ( oh oh) needs now
is an-ar-chy
what the world (whoa whoa) needs now
is an-ar-chy

They told me a year had passed

We invite you to enjoy a bit of poetry about our time in Barcelona and Spain this Friday afternoon.  Have a great weekend and stay fresh!

They told me a year had passed

By David Mint

 

I sat on the terrace in Les Planes,

Staring blankly at the wooded hills

Beyond the train station

Pondering all that had occurred

 

I’d arrived in the dead of winter,

Without expectations,

Without plans,

completely unprepared

 

I’d resisted the change,

Defiant,

Trapped in my ways,

Until the day that I was broken

 

At the point of death,

I sat waiting at Sant Pau,

And soiled myself,

Shortly after I’d been called

L'hospital de Sant Pau

As I lay in the dungeon,

Of the modernist gem,

Life dripped back into my veins,

Yet only to a point

 

I arose,

A changed man,

A blank page,

Humbled

 

I was free to travel,

Learn,

Serve,

And to love

 

Free to explore,

 Llançà, Huesca

Contra Corriente, El Lokal, L’Estudi,

Les Heures, Ligonde

 

Yet it is the people,

The love,

The Spirit which we share,

That remains

 

I met my true love,

Now this dream will never end,

We march forward and do not look back

Two becoming one,

 

I sat on the terrace in Les Planes,

Staring blankly at the wooded hills

They told me a year had passed,

And I did not believe them

If I Had a Trillion Dollars, A Ballad From Ben Bernanke to the Banks (With Apologies to the Bare Naked Ladies)

We send you into the first weekend of December with another Classic Mint.  This was written when Quantitative Easing was still relatively new, and the Federal Reserve was on the verge of printing another slew of money.  Enjoy and have a great weekend!
11/2/2010 Portland, Oregon – Pop in your mints…

Today and tomorrow the entire world, that is, the investment world, will be watching what the Federal Reserve and its poster boy, Ben Bernanke.  What will he do?  Most money managers and bond traders are operating under the assumption that he will proceed to create approximately $1 Trillion US dollars out of thin air through a process known as Quantitative Easing (QE), which is nothing more than indirectly confiscating at least $1 Trillion worth of goods and services from those who produce them in good faith and are compelled to accept US dollars in exchange for them.

You see, Mr. Bernanke and his cohorts are presented with an impossible dilemma.  If they do nothing, bondholders get absolutely annihilated in short order and the dollar continues as a viable currency.  If they proceed with the $1 Trillion QE game, the currency is the sacrificial lamb and the bondholders get a lifeline, but will get annihilated in the end anyway.  Essentially it is the choice of when to feel the pain of massive default on dollar denominate paper.

But what must Mr. Bernanke be thinking at this very hour with so much at stake?  The world presumably expects $1 Trillion dollars.  Logic would follow that, at a minimum, what he must provide to avoid “disruption” in the markets.  You see, the markets have long since baked in these $1 Trillion dollars and if they do not appear will adjust prices accordingly.  Guessing which prices will change and when is what keeps things interesting.
Our guess here at The Mint is that Mr. Bernanke is not thinking at all.  He has his orders; the markets will wait and see if he follows them.  What he is likely doing is strumming his guitar and warming up his academic tenor voice with a song that goes something like this:
“If I Had a Trillion Dollars”  a Ballad from Ben Bernanke to the Banks (with Apologies to the Bare Naked Ladies):
To the tune of “If I Had a Million Dollars“:
If I had a trillion dollars
(If I had a trillion dollars)
I’d buy the US a house
(I would buy the US a house)
If I had a trillion dollars
(If I had a trillion dollars)
I’d buy the US furniture for its house
(No interest or payments for a year)
And if I had a trillion dollars
(If I had a trillion dollars)
Well, I’d buy the US a Ford
(And get everyone’s clunker off the road)
If I had a trillion dollars I’d buy your bonds!
If I had a trillion dollars
I’d buy some junk paper from your books
If I had trillion dollars
They could help, it’d be less you’d have to cook
If I had trillion dollars
Maybe we could put like a little collateral in there somewhere
You know, we could just act like everything’s cool
Like show off the CUSIPs and stuff
Then there would still be liquidity available to us
As if we never bought subprime CDOs and other things
They have endless liquidity but they don’t have asset quality anymore
Thanks to me, of course,
Uh, yeah

If I had a trillion dollars
(If I had a trillion dollars)
I’d buy up asset backed securities
(But not with real money I’d be a fool!)
And if I had a trillion dollars
(If I had a trillion dollars)
Well, I’d buy up Synthetic CDOs
(Yep, like a Hybrid or non-performing SIV)
And if I had a trillion dollars
(If I had a trillion dollars)
Well, I’d buy up Lehman Brother’s remains
(Ooh, all them crazy Hudson Castle assets!)
And If I had a trillion dollars I’d buy your bonds!

If I had a trillion dollars
We wouldn’t have to tax the people more
If I had a trillion dollars
Now, we’d stick to the foreign creditors
If I had a trillion dollars

We wouldn’t have to eat our bad debts
But we would eat our bad debts
Of course we would, we’d just eat more
And pad our tier 1 ratios with new cash
That’s right, all the free cash… FED credit!
Mmmmmm, Mmmm-Hmmm

If I had a trillion dollars
(If I had a trillion dollars)

Well, I’d get us out of this mortgage mess
(But not the homeowners, I’m no fool!)
And if I had a trillion dollars
(If I had a trillion dollars)
Well, I’d buy financial reform
(Ala  Dodd-Frank and Obama)

If I had a trillion dollars
(If I had a trillion dollars)
Well, I’d make you solvent
(Haven’t you always wanted to be solvent?)

If I had a trillion dollars
I’d buy your bonds!

If I had a trillion dollars, If I had a trillion dollars
If I had a trillion dollars, If I had a trillion dollars
If I had a trillion dollars…

You’d be rich!

Seriously, to enjoy some real entertainment (and to get the tune in your head to sing along with Ben and the banks), check out the Bare Naked Ladies performing their 1996 hit “If I Had a Million Dollars” below.  As for tomorrow’s FED announcement, rest easy and wait along with the rest of the investment world to see if Ben & Co. really have the $1 Trillion dollars expected of them.  Of course they don’t really have it but at least it will be fun to see how they explain it this time, that is until those $1 trillion show up in commodity prices!


Stay Fresh!

The First of December: A poem, a memory, and a lesson

12/1/2011 Portland, Oregon – Pop in your mints…

The first of December has come.  Contrary to “political” belief, the first of December would have arrived even if the large European bank which caused all the global fake money shuffling amongst western Central Banks to occur yesterday had been allowed to fail.

Nature cares not whether a man or woman in New York or Frankfurt raise a finger to populate a spreadsheet with a number representing something that does not exist but as a figment of the popular imagination.  The sun would have set and a great majority of the world would have been none the wiser, and likely better off.

Make no mistake, the actions taken by Central Banks are made for the benefit of very few to the detriment of a great many.  For this reason, we have called it Man’s Greatest Catastrophe.

The first of December always brings with it a fond memory from our youth here at The Mint. 

Some 20 years ago we were in the midst of our junior year of high school.  Like many our age, we preferred hanging out with friends to completing our assigned homework.  A winter’s evening of that year found us doing the former while ignoring the latter.

On that particular evening, however, we were concerned.  We had to write a poem for a class in which we were struggling the next day.  At the time, it seemed a monumental task, made all the more impossible by leaving the task to the last minute. 

We shared the dilemma with our friends that evening as we were excusing ourselves early in order to work on the poem at home.

A dear friend of our spoke up:  “What does the poem need to be about?”

“Nature,” we replied.

“Hang on a minute,” replied our friend as he gathered pencil and paper and began to write.  Within five minutes, he handed me the draft of a poem and said, “There, now you can stick around a bit longer!”

We were stunned, not only at the unselfishness of our friend, but at the eloquent words which he came up with in such a brief time.  Our teacher, failing to see the genius and beauty in the poem, gave a merely average grade and forced us to revise and extend it.  The subsequent revision, as we recall, severely diluted the beauty of the original five stanzas and attempted to resolve something that was better left to the reader to resolve.

 

Courtesy of Wildlifearchives.com

 

Like so many things in life, an abundance of solutions robs people of the opportunity to think for themselves.  Between television, sermons, university lectures, and government policies, life is diminished for many by listening to the voices of men in place of the sacred dialogue between a man and his God.

Our friend’s poem allowed for this dialogue.

We hope to one day be able to locate the manuscript of his masterpiece to share it with you.  It is appropriately titled “The First of December” and is a moving description of a wintry scene witnessed by a man who is soon caught up in the wonder of it all.  He then abruptly realizes that all that he is witnessing is occurring and will continue to occur, without his intervention, long after he is gone.

The realization humbles him.

We leave you with the last stanza which is forever etched in our memory:

“Now I must go,

But I’ll always remember,

Life in the cold,

On the first of December”

 

Stay tuned and Trust Jesus.

Stay Fresh!

David Mint

Email: davidminteconomics@gmail.com

Key Indicators for December 1, 2011

Copper Price per Lb: $3.53
Oil Price per Barrel:  $100.14

Corn Price per Bushel:  $5.95  
10 Yr US Treasury Bond:  2.12%

FED Target Rate:  0.08%  ON AUTOPILOT, THE FED IS DEAD!

Gold Price Per Ounce:  $1,744 PERMANENT UNCERTAINTY

MINT Perceived Target Rate*:  2.00%
Unemployment Rate:  9.0%
Inflation Rate (CPI):  -0.1%
Dow Jones Industrial Average:  12,020  

M1 Monetary Base:  $2,155,200,000,000 RED ALERT!!!  THE ANIMALS ARE LEAVING THE ZOO!!!
M2 Monetary Base:  $9,627,300,000,000 YIKES UP $1 Trillion in one year!!!!!!!