World Wide Dumbasses Panic...You'll have to excuse me for sitting here on the banks of the Mighty Tennessee River smirking this morning.
I guess if you were in some way in my position you might be grinning too.
You see, at the ever greying, ever balding age one year short of a half Century, I've already had my spirit broken and my ass kicked both physically and financially, and as a direct result of those lessons and a little bit of luck and by the grace of God I feel today like I'm on the sidelines watching a really really bad football game being played in the financial equivalent of the "special Olympics."
Like a bad dream, I witness daily scenes where almost everyone but me appears to be handicapped when it comes to financial matters, and the government morons wearing the striped shirts and playing "officials" or "referees" have been drugged or blindfolded or otherwise selected from the ranks of the unemployed and unemployable or something resulting in the ineptitude with which I'm subjected.
I've said it before, and I guess that I'll have to say it again so let's try to get this straight...
There is no financial crisis if you and/or your company is financially sound. IF, however, you live on credit cards and borrow every dime you spend because you are living beyond your true means then I'm sorry to say that I agree that you're probably "UP SHIT CREEK" for the foreseeable future, but the good news is (and the moral of my story)...
THEY'RE NOT BURNING AMERICAN DOLLARS...
YET.
In fact, in spite of the current decline in stock prices AND, in spite of the current "credit crisis" or "mortgage meltdown" or whatever you call it, there are still houses out there to buy and sell, cars (particularly SUV's and Trucks) are being given away at cost, and the money in your bank account will generally buy more food and most anything else (including gasoline recently) and if you care to go shopping on Wall Street or in Europe or Asia the US dollar is stronger than EVER.
Dammit people, get a grip on your
public Government School educated selves.
Forget the news programs and newspaper headlines, try THINKING for yourself for five minutes and learn something from me in the process this morning.
FIRST, IF you're in the Stock Market, stand pat and hold your cards for now. IF the stupid government will manage to avoid getting any further into the banking business and leave free enterprise and the markets alone things will recover. It's closer to October 19, 1987 than it is to 1929 both on the calendar and in the dynamics of what is happening today.
SECOND, IF you aren't already leveraged up to your eyeballs and are under the age of forty, you should seriously consider buying into some Blue Chip Dividend paying companies like the Electric Utilities (Southern Company) or even the hated Oil company stocks (assuming that the frigging government stays out of their business and lets market forces continue to rule.)
THIRD, IF you are like me and are working from a CASH position with minimal debt and a slightly more sense than a horse or your family dog/cat, understand that with the US and World financial market's decline your money is STRONGER than ever, and you should fight tooth and nail the idea of allowing your Government to intervene and marginalize your efforts, discipline, and sound decision making.
I'm paying my mortgage on time.
I could have bought two or three times as much house as I bought last spring but I settled for "enough" house rather than a "trophy house" and as a result my mortgage payment is less than my rent payment was on our Little Island on the Georgia Coast.
I can pay my credit cards off every month so payments are not an issue.
I have investment property that represents a chunk of my normally liquid cash portion of my net worth and might not sell this winter, but it's still worth over half my mortgage payment in rent so I can convert it into either cash or cash flow regardless if the Government will stay out of my way.
The rest of our money is in CD's, a few mutual funds, and money market accounts and with the exception of the mutual funds every thing's yield is rising monthly.
The only thing that is going to further piss me off right now is you and the hoards of ignorant Democrats actually putting Obamarama into office and then like some mutant scene out of Young Frankenstein coming to my front door with torches and pitch forks and demanding a larger share of my "unfair bloated" Engineering income and raising my Capital Gains tax back up from it's current 15% level to match my income tax rate.
I'm truly sorry if you've followed the masses and lapsed into a Scholastically induced Coma, thereby sliding down the slippery slope in your pursuit of the "American Dream"--recently awakened to find yourself living in the "American Financial Whorehouse" with your wife/husband/kids/pets/Mother-in-law.
I'm also reluctant to put it like this, but...
NOT MY PROBLEM, AND CERTAINLY NOT MY RESPONSIBILITY.
Now get off your ass and get to work, and stop griping about everything YOU did to YOURSELF and get on with fixing things like I've done over the past ten years.
That will be all...for now...dammit...
APPENDIX:
In support of my assertion that the US Dollar is stronger that it has been in some time, check out these charts I Googled:
First there's my favorite chart, the US Greenback versus the Socialistic European Union's "Euro":
(for those of you that went to school at UGA or Mississippi State, that would represent a 15%+ increase in value since May of this year)
Here's the Dollar compared to the British Pound..
(once again...doing the fractions and dividing the numberator in denomination of Methodist, I get a near 15% increase since late in 2007...)
And not to discriminate against little far off Pacific Island Nations like Fiji:
Again...the Greenback's up over 15% since early this year when renting a beach chair or chartering a Scuba trip
Buying a Computer from Overseas...we're up over 7% recently against the currency of Taiwan:
Tired of having your customer support done on your computer or lawnmower from India?The good news is we're enjoying a similar advantage over the Rupee in the past 12 months:
For some screwy reason the comparison between the US Dollar and Chinese currency was unavailable on
this Yahoo web site where I found the rest of this information.
