It’s 6:30 so we have little to no time this morning. Yesterday Harry accomplished a lot and did most of what we had on our list. We have a new storm door in the back, he and I fixed the fence and gate on the side of the house, then he fixed the drywall, and a few other odds and ends. Today he’ll try to repair our hardwood floors and then be done. I guess he needs to be back in California by Friday night and is planning on driving all day Friday. It was fun to have him here.
We have baseball practice tonight and scheduled an indoor practice as its supposed to rain. Lori is going on a walk this morning with a friend before work and might stay home as her neck is sore from painting. The carpet guy came by yesterday and although we’re getting a deal, it’s still going to cost $1289! Ugh.
That’s about it, time to run, have a great day, God Bless
Last night we played baseball and boy was it cold with the wind blowing hard off the mountains. We lost by a couple of runs but more on that later. It’s supposed to rain and/or snow on and off for the next 4 days or so meaning today is our last nice day.
Ok, here we go. Lori made it to the game by 7pm which was the starting time and Ty and his friends played hard the whole game in a field next to ours. We had a rough start but then tied the game with an inning to go. The coach and I had a different philosophy as he elected to play a couple kids who previously had errors which then cost us the game. Our other assistant coach was also confused as to why our coach played these kids. Now to be honest, there were plenty enough errors earlier that cost us the game (none by Jag!) but we were in a position to win and with the late roster moves, there’s no way we would. I woke up to three texts this morning apologizing for his attitude and thanking me for all my help. I know he was trying to put certain kids in pressure situations to see if they could work through it but if we would have managed to win (like in real baseball) we would have won. He told the team after the game how disappointed he was in the individual play with little to no teamwork and then asked me if I had anything to say to which I simply said, “guys, if you as individuals continue to make errors, we’ll just need to bench you, we cannot continue to make errors on basic plays we have practiced over and over.” My point is, we’re past the ‘everyone gets to play and everyone gets a trophy” stage. If you play well, you play, if you continuously screw up and have poor technique, you sit, simple as that. As for Jagger, he played great and looked like a real ball player up there. If things don’t change, he’ll need to move on to a more talented team. We basically have 4 guys out of 13 that can’t hit, then another 2 or so that’ll swing at bad pitches but I can work around that. What killed us was lazy plays by some kids trying to one hand the ball when hit to them or a couple kids (one in particular) that cannot catch a fly ball. That kid dropped two in a row last night and the coach insisted on playing him when the game was tied. I’m all for helping him, and have tried, but would not have played him in a tie game with 20 minutes to go. Oh well, things could be worse, time to let it go so that’s it. I’m meeting with the coach today and trust me, that will not happen again.
I’m worn out from rehashing this so time to go, take care, God Bless.
Yes, more baseball today as tonight at 7pm until 9, we have a game. Yesterday we went to the cages and worked on some hitting. We set the machine at 60 mph which is pretty darn fast when you’re standing in there waiting for a pitch. Both boys (Jag and Jake) were hitting almost every ball after they got their timing down.
Meanwhile Lori was painting and distressing the cabinets in the kitchen until she ran out of paint. Some of our cabinet doors that Harry replaced the hinges on, are falling off, as he had to grind down the screws as the doors are pretty thin, and now they’re not holding. Not sure how we’ll, or he, will fix this. He’s supposed to arrive at 8 this morning but then again, he was supposed to work Saturday and Sunday also. Anyhow it’ll get done when it gets done. The cabinets that Lori finished off in creme look pretty good. You have to really try a few different things and then look at it before you can tell what looks good and what doesn’t. So it’s a trial and error thing so to speak.
It’s 5:10am and I’m yawning as I didn’t slept too well. I think I was sliding around on our new sheets! Rain and wet snow arrive Wednesday and will wind down Friday night.
That old bag Hillary announced she’s running for President yesterday. She basically just thinks it’s her turn and acts so entitled. She’s for one, too old (8 years ago she said McCain was too old and she’s even older now!), she’s a liar, look at history, Benghazi, her emails, even all the way back to Whitewater, she’s accomplished nothing except being the wife of Bubba, and has no new ideas. Now I’m just as much against having another Bush in the White House. I mean does anyone really want to go into another Bush or Clinton era? I sure hope not. She will play the “I’m a woman” card, but that’s about all she has going for her. Personally I don’t think she has a chance but you can never underestimate the stupidity of the uninformed American voter. God help us.
Late yesterday afternoon Jag and I ran to Costco to buy some new sheets as the only ones we currently own are flannel. Our cotton ones had ripped last fall. So they had two choices and I bought the more expensive ones with the higher thread count. Later that evening when I put them on the bed, it was like sleeping at a hotel. They were almost slippery although not silk. Anyhow they were really nice, I should probably take them off and wash them today as I didn’t have a chance to last night.
Meanwhile Lori was distressing the kitchen cabinets with some black and red type of finish or paint. She has three cabinets done but we’re not sure we like it. It might be too dark. We might change it to a creme color today.
Jagger and I will be heading out to the batting cages today to hit some baseballs before tomorrow’s game. Hopefully my friend and his kid, who has had a cut finger, can join us. Ty had Jack sleep over, it’s like every weekend night we have an extra kid or two. Jag’s friend left at 3pm and Jack was here by 3:30!
Time to run, have a great Sunday, God Bless.
But before I go, I just have to share with you the big banks latest thoughts on what to do. You see, they’re so in debt they need to come up with a new solution to get out of it, so how about this, make all cash worthless! Check this out,
Citi Economist Says It Might Be Time to Abolish Cash
Akos Stiller/Bloomberg
The world’s central banks have a problem.
When economic conditions worsen, they react by reducing interest rates in order to stimulate the economy. But, as has happened across the world in recent years, there comes a point where those central banks run out of room to cut — they can bring interest rates to zero, but reducing them further below that is fraught with problems, the biggest of which is cash in the economy.
In a new piece, Citi’s Willem Buiter looks at this problem, which is known as the effective lower bound (ELB) on nominal interest rates.
Fundamentally, the ELB problem comes down to cash. According to Buiter, the ELB only exists at all due to the existence of cash, which is a bearer instrument that pays zero nominal rates. Why have your money on deposit at a negative rate that reduces your wealth when you can have it in cash and suffer no reduction?
Cash therefore gives people an easy and effective way of avoiding negative nominal rates.
Buiter’s note suggests three ways to address this problem:
Abolish currency.
Tax currency.
Remove the fixed exchange rate between currency and central bank reserves/deposits.
Yes, Buiter’s solution to cash’s ability to allow people to avoid negative deposit rates is to abolish cash altogether. (Note that he’s far from being the first to float this idea. Ken Rogoff has given his endorsement to the idea as well, as have others.)
Before looking at the practicalities of abolishing currency, we should first look at whether it could ever be necessary. Due to the costs of holding large amounts of cash, Buiter puts the actual nominal rate at which the move to cash makes sense as closer to -100bp. So, in order for a cash abolition to become necessary, central banks would need to be in a position where they wished to set nominal rates much lower than that.
Buiter does not have to go far to find an example of where a central bank may have wanted to set interest rates much lower to -100bp. He uses (a fairly aggressive) Taylor Rule to show that Federal Reserve rates should have been as low as -6 percent during the financial crisis.
It seems Buiter is correct: Sometimes strongly negative nominal rates are called for.
Buiter is aware that his idea may be somewhat controversial, so he goes to the effort of listing the disadvantages of abolishing cash.
Abolishing currency will constitute a noticeable change in many people’s lives and change often tends to be resisted.
Currency use remains high among the poor and some older people. (Buiter suggests that keeping low-denomination cash in circulation — nothing larger than $5 — might solve this.)
Central banks and governments would lose seigniorage revenue.
Abolishing currency would inevitably be associated with a loss of privacy and create risks of excessive intrusion by the government.
Switching exclusively to electronic payments may create new security and operational risks.
Buiter dismisses each of these concerns in turn, finishing with:
In summary, we therefore conclude that the arguments against abolishing currency seem rather weak.
Whatever the strength of the arguments, the chances of an administration taking the decision to abolish cash seem vanishingly small. However in a few years it’s easy to see how this could happen. Right now everyone is trying to outlaw paying for large expenditures in cash. Lots of places won’t take cash and if they will, and you pay for something large (like let’s say a few thousand dollars or more) in cash, you’ll be reported to the government.
You absolutely must take a good percentage of your cash and buy physical gold and silver now. This will always hold value, your money won’t.
Yesterday was filled with baseball, kids events, a sleepover, some drama at work (both of ours) and some housework, or in general, just life. Sometimes it’s like a movie around here, in fact maybe someday there will be a movie based on this blog! That’s why it’s so important that you comment or do something interesting so you get in. Then you can start deciding who you’d like to have play you in the movie!
Today we’ll be doing some stuff around the house, most likely involving paint! Then tonight we’ll grill up some beef and I think we’re going to try to get up to Red Rocks for some hiking. I did manage to get my haircut and squeeze in a workout yesterday which was long overdue. I worked out so hard, my bones hurt.
It’ll be warmer today but still a little cool. They say tomorrow will be the nice day of the weekend. Snow again maybe next Wednesday and hopefully then that’ll be it. Lori, Ty and I are up while Jag and Michael (his friend from school and baseball) are still sleeping. That’s what happens when you’re 13!
Thank God It’s Friday! That’s what TGIF means in case you don’t know. Boy this week sure went fast. It seems as though it was just the weekend a day or so ago.
Harry will be here this morning and work all the way through Sunday hoping to get everything on our list done. Lori will be at work and I need to run to the distributor.
After school Jagger needs to go buy supplies with the rest of Student Council for the big dance next week at school. I’ll be at baseball practice and Ty and Vinny will get dropped off after they finish up their Science Fair practice session. Then I’ll drop them at Kids Night Out and Vinny’s parents will pick them up at 10pm. So that’s our day. Jag will hopefully finish up early and I’ll leave practice to go pick him up and bring him back to baseball.
Cool still today, like in the low 60’s but the 70’s are back tomorrow. It’s the home opener for the Colorado Rockies and we’re 3 and 0! Today we play the Chicago Cubs, wish we could go but as you can see, we’re quite busy and putting all our extra cash into the house. The O’Connells, our neighbors, listed their house for $530K which is great news as their home is only 1900 square feet. Sure hope they get it!
Tomorrow we need to get back to work around here like finish painting the basement and maybe taping off the bedroom ceiling to paint it too. Our new shutters out front sure look nice! Wish we had a couple thousand extra bucks as there’s a few other things I’d add to the list. To pay Harry, buy all the supplies, (shutters, paint, cabinet hardware, door jams, storm door, etc.) and budgeting for the carpet guy, we had to come up with a good chuck of change as it is. It’s not cheap to repair 15 years worth of kid damage, ha ha. Oh well, we’ll do what we can do!
That’s it, time to run, have a great day and weekend, God Bless.
Yesterday was Dixie’s birthday and I totally forgot! I did remember a few days ago as I mentioned it to Lori then but somehow I forgot yesterday, so let’s do it over today.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANDMA DIXIE!
Hope it was a good one.
Today it’s a little cooler outside but is supposed to warm up tomorrow. Last night we had what I think was the first good rain of they year. It’s 35 out right now but should get to the mid 50’s later this afternoon.
Baseball was a little cold but not too bad. Jag will miss Friday’s practice as he has to shop for the school dance with the rest of student council.
Lori’s working away and yesterday Harry put up a piece of trim in the house and shutters outside. He’ll work Friday, Saturday and Sunday and thinks he can get everything done by then. We bought all the stuff we need yesterday morning.
That’s about it, hope all’s well, take care and God Bless
It’s Wednesday or sometimes called hump day for the middle of the week. I had to ask Lori what day it was as I wasn’t sure. That’s what happens when you’re out of coffee and have to get up and go to Starbucks first thing. It throws off your whole day!
Tonight is baseball but first up is work, school and more work. It’s a bit after 6 and I’m running out of time as Lori and I and Harry need to go to Lowes at 8am so time to run to buy some supplies to fix things up around here. Hope you all are doing well and have something fun going on today.
As I had said, Easter Sunday, Cliff, our head coach called me and said he had to go out of the State for a few days. I sort of pressed him as to why but he didn’t say so I didn’t push it. Anyhow that means I was in charge of practice. So my buddy who played MLB came down and helped us out. I decided to focus on hitting for the entire practice and while after the first hour my friend said “they just don’t listen” we finally got through those thick 13 year old brains. By the end of practice he had our worst hitters looking like ball players hitting hard balls out to the outfield. I couldn’t believe it. I’m trying to get him back for Wednesday’s practice. By the way, Jag hit a bomb that any Colorado Rockie would have been happy to have hit!
It was warm and sunny and Ty came along to play. School’s in full swing and so is work. I was supposed to be in NY this week and might go out next but we’ll see.
Today I’m off to Boulder and then all the way across town. Wisconsin lost in the last few minutes last night to Duke in the NCAA Finals. I’m sure my Mom wasn’t too happy but it was a good game and hey, they were the 2nd best team in the Country!
Guess I’ll run, hope you’re not just sitting around as soon it’ll be summer! We’re trying to do something everyday and every weekend, even if it’s just around the house. No time to waste time!
Here we go, back at it in full swing. Today we have work, school and Harry will start working on the house. Yesterday we hunted for eggs and baskets, went to church, cleaned the house and had everyone here for lunch and then enjoyed the great weather. Snow and rain are back mid week.
This week I have lots and lots to do including a trip to the mountains, 3 baseball practices and a game. Throw in tons of computer and house work as well as the normal juggling of finances and it’ll be a busy week.
Tonight is the Final Four with Wisconsin and Duke but first we have baseball. The head coach called last night telling me he had to go out of state for a while so looks like I’m head coach. Not sure what’s going on but I’ve enlisted my buddy who used to play major league ball to come and help.
It’s 6:30 and Ty, Lori and I are all up. Ty’s not feeling too well as he ate too much candy and Lori isn’t either as she ate a bad Easter egg. Turns out when she hard boiled them, they didn’t get quite done so she thought she’d bake them to finish them off, AFTER the boys had colored them. I told her no way I was eating one but she decided to go ahead and have one, big mistake. She’s a bit better today but what a stomach ache she had within an hour of cracking her egg open yesterday.
No politics, just get ready, time is running short, the signs are everywhere and they are not good, enough said.
Here’s one troubling thing going on where the Pres’s former economic advisor and almost Fed Chair says some really troubling things. I didn’t post the entire article but you’ll get the meaning. And oh yea, gold soared to new highs today!
This Is Why The US Just Lost Its Superpower Status According To Larry Summers
If Larry Summers were a country, he would have joined the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. With a backpedalling Washington now completely isolated in its opposition to the China-led venture and with support and enthusiasm running so high that even Beijing itself is apparently surprised, none other than “the hawk†that was almost, kind of considered for the chairmanship of the Fed is out with a sharp rebuke of the US stance calling March “the moment the United States lost its role as the underwriter of the global economic system.â€Of course we’ve been persistent in our contention that the AIIB represents much more than an attempt on China’s part to provide an alternative source of infrastructure financing to fill the gaps left by the ADB, and as is made abundantly clear by the following, the “secret†is certainly out…
* Â * Â *
Time US Leadership Woke Up To New Economic Era, by Larry Summers
This past month may be remembered as the moment the United States lost its role as the underwriter of the global economic system. True, there have been any number of periods of frustration for the US before, and times when American behaviour was hardly multilateralist, such as the 1971 Nixon shock, ending the convertibility of the dollar into gold. But I can think of no event since Bretton Woods comparable to the combination of China’s effort to establish a major new institution and the failure of the US to persuade dozens of its traditional allies, starting with Britain, to stay out of it.
This failure of strategy and tactics was a long time coming, and it should lead to a comprehensive review of the US approach to global economics. With China’s economic size rivalling America’s and emerging markets accounting for at least half of world output, the global economic architecture needs substantial adjustment. Political pressures from all sides in the US have rendered it increasingly dysfunctional.
Looks like the rest of the World isn’t believing Obama’s talk anymore. We are increasingly being ignored and left out of World policy. Throughout history America was the undisputed leader in global monetary policy, we led the way and the rest of the World always based their economies on the U.S. dollar. Now in short, they are abandoning us and our currency and looking to the Chinese yuan and other currencies. This is a BIG BIG problem as then our currency and economy holds no international value. You may not understand this or think this is a big deal but you will when prices really go up on the things you buy and use every single day. Forget that milk is now about $6.50 a gallon (up about $1 in 3 months), wait until we are no longer regarded (which according to Larry Summers has already happened) as the World’s currency. It’s nothing but a house of cards and it will soon come crashing down. Good luck!
