It’s time to sit back, relax and enjoy a little joe …
Welcome to another rousing edition of Black Coffee, your off-beat weekly round-up of what’s been going on in the world of money and personal finance.
Okay, off we go …
Credits and Debits
Credit: The US GDP was revised upwards to 4.6% this week. That is a huge number indicating a booming economy that’s firing on all cylinders. Strangely, looking around, it doesn’t really feel that way. At all.
Debit: You’d think with such a strong economy that there would be far fewer than 1 in 4 Americans between 25 and 54 without a job. On the other hand, what do I know? Save your snarky email, folks — that’s a rhetorical question.
Debit: Did you see this? In four short years, Obamacare and expenses related to a companion electronic healthcare records program have cost American taxpayers $73 billion. That’s billion, with a “b.” In four years. I know.
Debit: According to Bloomberg, taxpayers have been forced to cough up $2.1 billion just for the snake-bitten Obamacare website and supporting enrollment system. That’s nearly three times government estimates. Three times! On Capitol Hill they call that a rounding error.
Debit: Not to worry though; Obamacare advocates have a plan to keep cost overruns from becoming even worse. Um … well, that is, if the latest piece in The Atlantic by Obamacare-architect Ezekiel Emanuel is any indication; he wants to die at 75.
Debit: According to Emanuel: “The deadline forces each of us to ask whether our consumption is worth our contribution.” Really, Mr. Emanuel? Pathetic. But I digress …
Debit: When it comes to estimating future costs, the federal government’s incompetence is breathtaking. Take the new headquarters being constructed for the Department of Homeland Security: It was supposed to cost $3.3 billion. It’s currently $1.5 billion over budget — and 11 years behind schedule.
Debit: Hey, it’s only money, right? After all, it’s not as if we don’t have the Fed around to print whatever the government needs. Besides, all that “money” being conjured out of thin air is put to good use in other ways too — until this week, it has been lifting the stock market to new highs on an almost-weekly basis.
Debit: Don’t think the Bank of Japan hasn’t noticed: They’ve bought so many Nikkei equities to keep their ailing economy afloat — including a record number last month — that the value of its portfolio is now equivalent to almost 2% of the entire Japanese stock market. Yeah, that’s going to end well.
Credit: The resulting public delusion from all of this manipulation is why Andy Hoffman warned this week that: “The stock market is no longer an ‘indicator’ of anything other than Central bank monetization.” Thankfully, the central banks can’t fool everyone.
Debit: Whether it’s groceries, stocks, bonds, or commodities, central bank interference in the financial market has so thoroughly corrupted price signals that it’s now utterly impossible to identify the true value of anything. In fact, some people have become so bamboozled by the chicanery that they believe gold is “tarnished forever.” Heh. If they say so.
Credit: Mark my words: Eventually, enough people will realize that all of the world’s paper-based wealth is a grand illusion based on a foundation of empty promises. On that day, the over-inflated markets will implode, and a stampede from financial paper into anything tangible will begin — including food.
Debit: Meanwhile, the garbage police is coming to Seattle, where the city council recently authorized fines for city residents who — get this — put too much food in their garbage can. Unbelievable. The ordinance is intended to help Seattle meet self-imposed composting goals.
Credit: As Franklin Sanders wryly observed: “(The ordinance) passed the city council by a 9-0 vote, which makes one wonder why they haven’t yet recycled the city council.”
Debit: Then again, considering that Seattle is the only city in America that has a sitting councilwoman who is a self-proclaimed socialist and a streetside statue of the tyrannical communist mass-murderer Vladimir Lenin — it’s a good bet that unbridled liberty won’t be returning to the Emerald City any time soon.
Credit: The people get the government they deserve. Hopefully, there will come a day when enough red-blooded Americans finally rise up and say enough is enough — at least when it comes to politicians who dictate how we must run the most basic aspects of our everyday lives.
By the Numbers
Commit these recycling facts to memory. That way, when you get stopped by the nanny-state’s recycling police, you can prove that, when it comes to being green, Kermit the Frog has nothing on you!
6 Months it takes the average orange peel to decompose.
450 Years required for Styrofoam to decompose.
5 Percentage of all plastics produced in the US that are recycled by Americans each year.
22 Percentage of all glass in the US that is recycled.
1 Number of recycled glass bottles required to save enough electricity to run a 100-Watt bulb for four hours. (Hopefully, not an incandescent bulb.)
1 Number of recycled aluminum cans required to save enough electricity to run a television for three hours.
540 Gallons of water wasted annually by a drippy faucet with a leak rate of one drop per second.
7000 Gallons of water that can be saved by recycling one ton of newspaper.
0 Percentage of so-called Millenials who currently have a newspaper subscription.
Contributing Source: Fact Monster
The Question of the Week
[poll id="27"]
Last Week’s Poll Results
On average, how many times do you withdraw money from an ATM each month?
- 1 or less (57%)
- 2 or 3 (27%)
- 4 or 5 (12%)
- More than 5 (4%)
More than 200 people responded to last week’s question and I’m happy to see that a strong majority tap the ATM machine one time per month or less. Then again, I guess that shouldn’t be too surprising considering the poll consists of a lot of people who, I strongly suspect, read personal finance blogs on a regular basis.
Other Useless News
Here are the top 5 articles viewed by my 6055 RSS feed and weekly email subscribers over the past 30 days (excluding Black Coffee posts):
- The 10 Best SmartPhone Apps for Financial Management and Budgeting
- How to Pay Off Credit Card Debt Quickly (No Matter What You Owe)
- 100 Words On: A Really Sneaky Way to Reduce Your Restaurant Bar Tab
- The Marriage Conundrum: Joint or Separate Accounts?
- The Average Owner Credit Score and Loan Payment for 10 Popular Cars
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Letters, I Get Letters
Every week I feature the most interesting question or comment — assuming I get one, that is. And folks who are lucky enough to have the only question in the mailbag get their letter highlighted here whether it’s interesting or not! You can reach out to me at: Len@LenPenzo.com
This week, Gael decided to share her thoughts on my extremely well-researched article explaining why only suckers buy waterbeds:
This post is utter rubbish!
Okay, but fair warning: If you live in Seattle, for God’s sake, please make sure you toss it in the right bin.
I’m Len Penzo and I approved this message.
Photo Credit: brendan-
Question, what’s a “Millineal”? Is that something different than a Millenial? The print newspaper is dead but they’ve decided to let it linger until the last reader turns off the lights in another 30 years.
Thanks for the correction. One of these days I’ll hire me a copy editor.
Your logic is impeccable, and I fully agree the stock market rally seems impossible to sustain. But the party goes on and plenty of analysts say it will continue to do so. What to do, what to do?
We’re all riding an economic bullet train, guided by the Fed, that is speeding down the tracks — and less than 1% of the population understand that there’s a bridge out up ahead. At this point, unless somebody can get to the front of the train and shut down the engine so we can reverse course, the options are pretty bleak. Can the Fed continue this charade for a long time and extend the amount of time the train keeps rolling down the tracks? Maybe. Unfortunately, us passengers have no visibility into how far we really are from the economic gorge we’re speeding towards. Because I think we’ll get there sooner rather than later, I’m focusing on maintaining the wealth I already have. For me, it’s now all about return OF investments, rather than return ON investments. People with less accumulated wealth may feel differently.