"I see nothink!"

I don't follow the daily ups and downs on the stock market -- after all, we don't own stocks -- but of course there are people who watch constantly. They chart, they predict, they explain, they apologize, and they analyze every wobble, every peak and valley, every move.

One such website is ZeroHedge. I dip into this website a couple times a week because it's interesting to read explanations about what the financial world is doing. And ZeroHedge, unlike other financial sites I've seen, tends to look at the overall picture. In other words, they tend to see the forest and the trees.

A couple weeks ago they put up an article entitled For The "Nothing Is Happening... Everything Is Awesome" Crowd in which they gave their views on why "nothing" happened to the financial world in September.

September, it seems, was considered a significant month. Many financial signs appeared to be coinciding in a way that made preppers and investors alike nervous. The stock market made wild swings, then straightened out. Stocks tanked and recovered.

But nothing earth-shattering happened. The month came and went, and we're all still here. This, of course, allowed the "See I told you so" types to say, well, "See I told you so."

But ZeroHedge saw it differently. To quote some portions (and leaving out some of the financially technical parts, which are well worth reading):

A lot of people out there expected something to happen in September that did not ultimately happen. There were all kinds of wild theories floating around, and many of them had no basis in reality whatsoever. But without a doubt, some very important things did happen in September.

As I warned about ahead of time, we are witnessing the most significant global financial meltdown since the end of 2008. All of the largest stock markets in the world are crashing simultaneously, and so far the amount of wealth that has been wiped out worldwide is in excess of 5 trillion dollars.

In addition to stocks, junk bonds are also crashing, and Bank of America says that it is a 'slow moving trainwreck that seems to be accelerating.' Thanks to the commodity price crash, many of the largest commodity traders on the planet are now imploding.

So I honestly do not understand the "nothing is happening" crowd. It takes ignorance on an almost unbelievable level to try to claim that "nothing is happening" in the financial world right now.

What we witnessed in September was not "the end" of anything. Instead, it is just the beginning.



Make of this what you will.

Me, I'm glad we haven't invested in the stock market. I'd rather invest in the "livestock" market.

Does our stuff own us?

A few weeks ago there was a thought-provoking piece on ZeroHedge entitled Do We Own Our Stuff, Or Does Our Stuff Own Us? (reprinted from OfTwoMinds.com)

The essay asked, "The frenzied acquisition of more stuff is supposed to be an unalloyed good: good for "growth," good for the consumer who presumably benefits from more stuff and good for governments collecting taxes on the purchase of all the stuff. But the frenzy to acquire more stuff raises a question: do we own our stuff, or does our stuff own us? I think the answer is clear: our stuff owns us, not the other way around."

This post got me wondering whether we (the Lewis family) fall into that category of who owns who.

We certainly don't subscribe to the "frenzied" acquisition of anything. The "normal" stuff most people think about acquiring leave me cold. I am utterly indifferent to fashion, jewelry, shoes, or other traditionally feminine interests. Yet I could (if not fettered by a budget) spend umpteen dollars on books. Hey, we all have our weaknesses.

That said, we have certainly acquired a fair amount of stuff, some of it very expensive (most recently, the wood cookstove and the tractor). These are items we feel will enhance both our livelihood and our self-sufficiency.

So as to the question of whether our stuff owns us, at this point I'd have to say "yes." But let me qualify that statement.

We moved from Oregon to Idaho in 2003 in part to obtain more land at a cheaper price so we could expand our livestock-raising efforts (we only had four acres in Oregon). Livestock, as anyone knows, ties you down. We can no longer take trips as a family; one of us must always be home. I suppose we could hire a house sitter, but so far it's never been necessary.

So who owns who? After giving the matter some thought, I realized that our "stuff" is also our livelihood. Our computers (since I'm a writer), our livestock, our garden, this blog, the shop with all our tools... all these contribute toward how we make a living.

In this regard, most people are "owned" by whatever obligations they undertake to earn an income. Short of winning the lottery, most people are not free to just jaunt off into the sunset, leaving their jobs behind them.

The article's writer states, "Frankly, I wouldn't accept a new big-screen TV, vehicle, tablet computer, etc. etc. etc. at any price because I am tired of stuff owning me. I don't want any more entertainment or computational devices, musical instruments, vehicles, clothing, kitchen appliances, or anything else for that matter, except what can be consumed with some modest enjoyment and no ill effects."

I certainly agree with this sentiment. Possessions like those listed above leave me cold anyway. I'm a Luddite when it comes to electronics, and fight tooth and nail against even downloading new computer programs (my husband will chuckle when he reads this since he knows how true it is!).

But the author of this piece seems to think those who own anything are enslaved by them. My question is, if you owned nothing, what would you do? Take off and travel the world? On whose money? Except for those who are independently wealthy, the rest of us have to be grounded enough to work for a living.

The secret, I think, is to enjoy what you do. Yes we're "enslaved" by our livestock and garden and work-at-home lifestyle, but since we like owning livestock and like growing a garden and like working at home, we don't feel enslaved. Indeed we feel freer than many people, since we can grow and raise a significant portion of our food, and we don't have to commute.

Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman once said, “Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work, driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for, in order to get to the job that you need so you can pay for the clothes, car, and the house that you leave empty all day in order to afford to live in it.”

Kinda spot-on, isn't it? Unquestionably there's a higher correlation between material possessions and work hours which can become a vicious circle. You work hard and so have less time, so you buy time-saving devices which cost money, so you have to work harder to pay for those time-saving devices.

In the book Better Off by Eric Brende, the author and his new bride lived for 18 months among a conservative Mennonite community utterly devoid of modern technology. They cooked on woodstoves and traveled by horse-and-buggy and plowed by horse and harvested and threshed by hand, etc. The book was a fascinating analysis of which tools are truly useful, which are not, and the value of labor.

At one point Mr. Brende even questioned the need for horses, pointing out how much labor goes into feeding and housing the animals that powered the community. If the number of horses were reduced, he argued, then presumably the amount of work and expenses associated with them would lessen as well.

And if this argument can be made about horses, how much more can it be made for $50,000 automobiles, massive mortgages, designer wardrobes, and consumer electronics? How much labor must people undergo to pay for those things?

Mr. Brende did admit that without the constant atmosphere of industrious work in the low-tech community, there would then be the risk of idle hands, particularly among the youth. If too much leisure occurs, what kind of mischief would then happen?

Interestingly, after the Brendes left the Mennonite community and rejoined the modern world (they now have three children), they continue to live as low-tech a lifestyle as is possible in an urban environment. Recently I saw a YouTube interview with them, filmed several years ago. At first I found myself steeped in admiration at how well they've managed to stay true to their values -- Mr. Brende points out how we spend most of our time serving the needs of technology rather than having technology serve our needs -- but then I began to wonder. Unlike the Mennonite group they lived in when first married, where everyone lived a similar lifestyle, the Brende's children are growing up in a place where they find themselves at odds with their peers. As the kids get older, will they reject their parents' philosophy and embrace a high-tech lifestyle? I don't know.

It occurred to me, as I watched my children on their laptops, that maybe it's not good for children to be TOO low-tech in a high-tech world. Once they leave the nest, they have to get along in the world and will have to make competent, mature decisions about the amount of technology they will want in their lives. But since our girls have grown up without iPads and smart phones and other hand-held wonders, they've never become addicted to tiny screens. They've never walked into walls or ditches because they're not paying attention to their surroundings.

So maybe, just maybe, it's better to introduce a judicious amount of technology during adolescence (NOT childhood) as long as it doesn't get out of hand.

On the other hand, Mr. Brende points out something very important during the YouTube interview: his home is the center of his life. He doesn't spend his time serving technology; his wife and children join forces to achieve things without the technology. Their lifestyle is family-centered and focused on what's truly important.

In that respect, he certainly has the right idea.

Inflation? What inflation?

I'm in shock. Sticker shock, that is.

We're working on an order of tankards. The customer would like them later this week, so Don's finishing up sixty pieces. He shot them with the first coat of varnish, then waited until they dried so we can scratch them (with 000-gauge steel wool) and brush them, then shoot them a second time with varnish.

But we were out of steel wool, so I volunteered to go to the hardware store to get some.

"While you're there," said Don, "could you pick me up some tomatoes?" My hard-working husband asks for very little, so a few out-of-season tomatoes is a treat I'm not going to deny him.

So off I went -- with $18 in my wallet. No problem, right? I mean, how much could a few tomatoes and some steel wool come to?

Well as it turns out, $19. I had to scrabble some coins together from the dashboard of the car to finish paying for everything.

The tomatoes were $2.99/lb. The total for five tomatoes came to $7.05. This was so startling to the checkout lady that she rechecked both the weight and the price, then shook her head sadly as she bagged them up.

At the hardware store, I confidently expected my remaining $11 to cover two bags of steel wool. Wrong. Steel wool, it seems, is now $5.99 per bag. As I said, I had to scramble for the last few coins to complete the sale.

I got back into the car stunned at the cost of these two items. It's not like I haven't had sticker shock before. But for Pete's sake -- $19 for two things...??!!

Therefore it was with grim amusement that Don forwarded me a ZeroHedge article on the official "lack" of inflation. This came on the heels of two articles linked on Drudge about the increases in food and electricity prices.

The ZeroHedge article is amusingly entitled There Is No Inflation (Unless You Eat Food, Use Water, Live In A House, Get Sick, Go To School, Or Do Taxes). It illustrates how deliberately manipulative government statics on inflation are for the common person. These number-crunching bureaucrats apparently never take a jaunt to the store for tomatoes or steel wool and leave with moths flying out of their wallets.

The article had a table showing the annual price increases for items that might impact your life on a daily basis, such as meat (up 12.7%), eggs (10.7%), fruits and vegetables (up 4.1%), butter (22.5%), and hospital care (up 4.9%). The funny thing is, ZeroHedge got these figures from an "official" government site. We already know they massage numbers -- so these price increase represent the massaged numbers. Are we having fun yet?

Hard on the heels of this article was another article which documented the record-high prices for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs. "In January 1967, when the BLS started tracking this measure," notes the article, "the index for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs was 38.1. As of last December 2013, it was 239.151. In November 2014 it hit 260.247. And in December 2014 it hit a record high of 261.002, an increase of 9.1 percent in one year."

Yet another article noted, "Data released today by the BLS indicates that the electricity price indexes hit all-time highs for the month of December and for the year. 2014 was the most-expensive year ever for electricity in the United States."

But remember: "Inflation? What inflation?"

The bottom line, folks, is we are having the (steel) wool pulled over our collective eyes by those who want to convince us the economy is just ducky.

I challege the pencil-pushers at the Bureau of Labor Statistics to go shopping for two items with $18 in their wallet, then tell me to my face there's no inflation.

Okay, rant over.

Odd and uneasy undercurrents

I bought a couple of bags of black-eyed peas last week.

Black-eyed peas are a very tasty bean, one we all enjoy. But they're a warm-weather crop and we can't grow them here in north Idaho. Therefore I like to keep some on hand.

Why?

To explain, let me digress slightly and discuss one of my favorite novels, The Far Pavillions by M.M. Kaye, which takes place in 19th century India. The story opens shortly before the Indian Rebellion (sometimes called the Sepoy Mutiny) of 1857. Concerning that event, consider a couple of passages:

"Akbar Khan had many friends in Delhi, and normally he would have wished to linger there. But this year he was aware of odd and uneasy undercurrents, and the conversation of his friends disturbed him. The city was full of strange rumors and there was tension and an ominous sense of suppressed excitement in the narrow, noisy streets and crowded bazaars. It gave him a sharp feeling of apprehension and an awareness of impending evil."

The main character of the book, Ashton, is four years old at the time of the Mutiny. Both he and his Hindu foster-mother Sita are caught up in the brutal events that took place during the Rebellion and are forced to flee, hiding in jungles and trudging through remote villages in search of a safe haven. The author describes their situation as follows: "But many who must reap the whirlwind [the aftermath of the Mutiny] were as blameless and bewildered as Sita and Ash-Baba, blown helplessly before the gale like two small and insignificant sparrows on a wild day of storm."

These two passages strike me strongly every time I read them. In the first passage, Akbar Khan is wise enough to note the ominous rumble beneath his feet, and he and his party respond by leaving Delhi and heading for the high Himalayan passes. ["A Prudent man sees danger and takes refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it." -- Proverbs 22:3]

In the second passage, it illustrates how bad things can happen to good people. Sita and Ash are two small and insignificant sparrows, unprepared for the violence that kills thousands of people over many months. Sita and Ash did nothing to deserve the life-changing events they had to live through as a result of the actions of others.

I can't help but draw parallels to today.

Are you feeling "odd and uneasy undercurrents" swirling around? I know I am. I don't know what the future holds in America, but it concerns me. I have a sense of urgency to put our ducks in order -- finalize the garden, make some improvements in our farm infrastructure, and in general try to make the homestead more self-sufficient.

It's not just me. I've heard others who also sense that something is coming. Nobody knows what, but a lot of people just have a general sense of... dread? concern? uncertainty? Call it what you will.

A couple weeks ago a comment on a news article caught my eye. It read: "Folks, whether you are getting government program assistance or not, PLANT GARDENS....plant everything and anything you can....in jars, in pots, in your basement, in your garage...in your house, on top of the house....in garden houses, in cold frames....wherever, however....starting planting now.....and learn to can food. The sky will fall when people on government programs cannot get food to eat. We must make sure that we all eat and have shelter. No matter what you think is normal routine life....do not ignore the necessity to provide for the future. Doesn't matter how much money you have...the money may not be available. Don't rely on food stores as the prices are skyrocketing. Need Plans B and C for survival."

A little incoherent, perhaps; but you can certainly sense this person's urgency.

Last week on Zero Hedge, there was a startling article called They're Coming for Your Savings. To quote: "Will more countries introduce capital controls or asset confiscations in the next few years? Duh, of course. Debt levels are unmanageable, so they have to be lowered. And there are only three ways to do it: deflationary collapse that wipes out the debt through default, inflation that wipes out the debt by destroying the world’s major currencies, or stealing enough private sector wealth to reset the clock. Option one – depression – is political poison so will be avoided at all costs. Option two is being tried and is failing because the deflationary effect of trillions of dollars of bad debt more or less equals the inflationary impact of trillions of dollars of new currency.

That just leaves door number three, demonize the successful and take what they’ve accumulated. Recall from the historical list that opened this post that governments like to pick on members of society who 1) have lots of money and 2) have lots of enemies or can easily be framed for crimes. This time around it will be “the rich” who are living well at the expense of the rest of us. The trick will be to define 'rich' down far enough to make possible the confiscation of middle-class IRAs and 401(K)s, since that’s where the real money is."

Yes, odd and uneasy undercurrents. A couple extra sacks of beans -- rather than a savings account -- sounds like a pretty good idea right now.