| Wednesday,
October 1, 2008 Lumley 'Thrilled' With
Gurkha Ruling
http://www.imdb.com/news/ni0576069 /
"Latest: Actress Joanna Lumley <http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0525921/>
will stay in Britain after former Nepalese Gurkha soldiers won their battle
to remain in the country.
The Indian-born British actress, whose father fought
alongside the Gurkhas in the British army, had threatened to leave the U.K
if former Nepalese Gurkha soldiers lost their battle to stay in the country.
But after taking their fight to the High Court in
London, it was ruled that up to 2,000 Gurkhas were allowed to stay in
Britain.
And Lumley branded their victory "utterly, utterly
thrilling".
She says, "I am so proud of British justice and so
proud of the Gurkhas. At last we can begin to put this great wrong right.""
So, apparently it is still mathematically possible for
the right thing to be done in England. Good to know.
Graves
==========
Empty space
Jerry,
Time in a bottle...er, bubble.
Instead of dark matter and dark energy, it may just be
that there is more ordinary matter elsewhere...
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,430943,00.html
Scientists: Earth May Exist in Giant Cosmic Bubble
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
By Clara Moskowitz
<snip>
Earth may be trapped in an abnormal bubble of
space-time that is particularly devoid of matter.
Scientists say this condition could account for the
apparent acceleration of the universe's expansion, for which dark energy
<http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080804-mm-dark-energy-superclusters.html>
currently is the leading explanation.<snip>
"If we lived in a very large under-density, then the
space-time itself wouldn't be accelerating," said researcher Timothy
Clifton of Oxford University <http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,430943,00.html#>
in England. "It would just be that the observations, if interpreted in the
usual way, would look like they were."<snip>
"The regular cosmological model is based on the idea
that where we live is a typical place in the universe. This would be a
contradiction to the Copernican principle." (that there is nothing unique
about Earth's place in the Universe). <snip>
===========
UK Death Tax
Dr. Pournelle,
Neither Harry Erwin nor the linked article reveals the
full spitefulness of the UK Tax Authorities' stance.
To clarify - you can't get "probate" (that is,
official approval of the will) until you've paid the death tax - which is
40% of the estate, above a fairly modest threshold.
And you can't get the assets until you've got probate!
Result - you inherit a valuable property, so you owe
the State £100's of K's, and you can't sell the house to get the money to
pay the tax - until you've paid the tax.
Oh, and who do you think decides on the value of the
house you can't yet do anything with? Yes, you guessed - the very same
State.
This is life under New Labour.
Make sure you Americans don't slide any further down
the slope to socialism, because believe me you will regret it in the end.
Andrew Duffin
===========
US 'casino' mentality blamed for planet's meltdown
Doctor P,
US 'casino' mentality blamed for planet's meltdown
Just when I was ready to accept most of the blame, the
Europeans and Third-World Tinpot's start telling me it is all my fault.
I guess I must have been wrong, if they agree with me!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/lt_meltdown_pointing_fingers
"Astounded by the U.S. government's failure to resolve
the financial crisis threatening the foundations of the global free market,
fingers of blame are pointing at America from around the planet."
Petronius
=========
Jerry
Putting science fiction to work on the battlefield:
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw
/htlead/articles/20080930.aspx
Ed
==========
Has Wall Street Already
Gotten What It Wanted?
Little noticed over the weekend of September
6-7, what with the Fannie Mae + Freddie Mac takeover...was the
essentially-simultaneous issuance of a new line of credit to the FHLB member
banks.
Now consider what has happened since:
1. J.P. Morgan Chase was given Washington Mutual
(largest co-owner of the Seattle FHLB).
2. Citigroup was given Wachovia (largest co-owner of
the Atlanta FHLB).
3. Wells Fargo (largest co-owner of the San Francisco
FHLB), through its dominant shareholder Warren Buffett, was given a slice of
Goldman Sachs;
and
4. A consortium of foreign-sounding banks (I'm not
sure the actual domicile of Nomura) was given a slice of Morgan Stanley.
Overlooked in the fanfare about GS and MS now being
able to take deposits, is the fact that they can presumably, as commercial
Federal Reserve chartered retail banks, now also originate mortgages. Hence,
New York's Big Four now suddenly have access to that September 7th line of
mortgage credit, courtesy of Mr. Paulson and the helpful folks at FDIC.
Does anyone know how large that line of credit is?
Does anyone else significant the timing, that
petroleum and gas futures were flat-to-down on Monday September 29, and
T-bill yields at the Sept. 29 auction were essentially indifferent to the
failure of the bailout...but it was only on Tuesday the 30th, when the
campaign renewed for passage of a bailout, that GS and MS began manipulating
the price of oil upwards, while the 12 member banks which set the LIBOR
(Citigroup foremost) spiked it up 4 points?
[From Europe; Name withheld]
I have no data on any of this. I do know
that a desire for vengeance seems to be stronger in influencing the
American populace than any understanding of the seriousness of the crisis.
===========
Subject: One Trillion Dollars poorer
You keep saying that and I keep not accepting it.
Have the factories disappeared? Have the houses
shrunk? Did the cars stop running? Did the engineers, computer programmers,
designers, plumbers and other trades get enstupidated or lose their skills?
Are you suddenly unable to buy a nice steak? No. The assets, the real
wealth, are still there. Money just measures them, and...it's an arbitrary
measure.
Many of those assets will get new owners. Toughers,
that's how the market works.
Take a look at
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/
2008/09/lenders-have-to.html. Lenders must lend. The money does
them no good unless they do.
Will this 'crisis' cause some problems? Probably. Will
they be worse than further socializing business with massive government
intervention? Not in my judgment.
Please don't forget your Mencken: "The whole aim of
practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to
be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all
of them imaginary."
Cheers
Fred Zinkhofer Canada
All I can say is that my holdings in one
account were down by about 15% over the past couple of months, and the
payments from the CREF retirement fund are lower by about the same amount.
Perhaps I have not lost that money? It's still there, only I just can't
see it? And if the value of some of the stocks in the CREF fund fall to
zero, it will be all right?
The factories were still there in 1933.
No houses shrunk in 1933. When I was growing up I remember soup kitchens
and long lines for any announced job, even though no houses had shrunk and
the factories were still there. Farms still grew crops and those who lived
on farms had food to eat, but if they had tractors they had no money to
buy fuel (fortunately those who had mules could grow food for the mule...)
So the remedy is to do nothing, and thus
avoid government interference; and allow the market to find its own level.
After the recovery yesterday we have only lost $500 Billion rather than a
Trillion. I don't know what will happen Friday if there is no government
action. I sure hope your optimism is the correct view.
After all, insurance has a negative
expected value for the buyer. It has to or the insurance company would go
broke. Does this mean one must not buy insurance?
==
the bailout
If, as you say, its the poor people's fault for buying
houses they can't afford, let's get the 750 billion from them.
Brian Gulino
Not entirely sure I ever said that. In
fact I am certain I did not. It is the case that people bought houses they
could not afford, with no down payment, at inflated prices; then when they
found they owed more money than the house was worth, walked away from it.
This included not only people like the kids down the street who strained
to buy a house and camped out in it without furniture, worked their tails
off, and really tried to own a nice house, but simply couldn't keep it up;
and the people who bought a book on getting rich flipping houses. It
included the illegal alien who bought a $450,000 house on a stated income
of $40,000 a year as a gardener and then was interviewed in The LA Times
about how he had "lost his dream."
I am not sure how one gets the money
from them. Perhaps we reinstitute indentured service and slavery? Many
cultures have allowed people to secure their debts by pledging their own
bodies; is it time to do that here?
In fact, the Investment injection
proposed last Monday did something like that: it had provisions for
allowing the government to hold the mortgages it bought and set terms for
repayment more in adjustment to the ability of the occupants to pay. That
is sort of like getting the money from those who bought the houses.
It wasn't a good bill; but it did seem
to do something.
Of course if the goal is to get revenge
on those who brought us to this pass, and we don't care what happens to
all of us so long as we can do that, the problem is a great deal simpler.
==
Not A Disaster
As far as I can tell, the bill that failed yesterday
would have had as bad an effect as doing nothing.
It soaked the taxpayers, apparently for full face
value of the bum mortages plus back interest. Then it left the purveyors of
said mortages free to incur additional taxpayer obligations and did next to
nothing to satisfy Freddie, Fannie and AIG creditors.
Sounds like Depression to me once that liquidity
squeeze hit home.
Solution? Pay their debts for them. Have their income
sent directly to you, give them a limited allowance to live on after you pay
their bills for them and take your cut. See the guys whose names end in a
vowell for how to collect.
Revenue bonds, anybody?
Dave
Hanley
I think you have misread the bill rather
thoroughly.
==
Thoughts on Our Financial Crises
Jerry,
I am mad as hell and I am not going to take it
anymore!
That was my initial reaction to the current financial
mess and our less than incompetent Congress. After some reflection I decided
to try and dispassionately determine where we are and where we need to go
and leave determining the blame for later. My thoughts are below.
Bob Holmes
The financial system in the United States and the
World is, currently in serious trouble. How it got that way should be a
topic for future discussion. Why it is in trouble and what to do about it
should be of immediate concern.
Most major financial institutions in the world are
suffering from Capital Impairment. What this means is that assets in their
portfolios are not currently worth what was initially paid for them and as a
consequence more capital is required to support their current loan
portfolios. Without additional capital they cannot make additional loans.
The assets that are currently “underwater” are
primarily bundles of mortgages, many of them sub-prime. The current market
values of these bundles are, in most cases, far below the value of the
discounted cash flows if these bundles were held to maturity. (As an example
Merrill Lynch sold some 30 to 40 billion dollars of these bundles at 22
cents on the dollar in July, 2008.) Selling these bundles at current market
prices will not help the current capital positions of the sellers.
In the absence of buyers for these bundles at
“reasonable” prices, the Treasury Secretary recommended that the US
Government become the buyer of last resort. He recommended an investment of
some 700 Billion Dollars to restore a reasonable level of capital to these
financial firms. While these purchases of these mortgage bundles would be
made at prices higher than the current market they would be substantially
below the face value of the bundles and the Financial Firms would end up
realizing significant losses on the sales.
Since the Government purchases would be higher than
the current market prices the Financial Firms would see an immediate
increase in capital and the crises might be alleviated enough for the Firms
to seek additional capital in the private market place.
The Government would not be giving money to the Firms.
It would be purchasing assets with the possibility of profits depending on
the price paid and how long the assets were held. (There have been estimates
that the Government could realize profits of as much as 300 to 500 billion
dollars on the 700 billion dollar investment.
Time is of the essence and the proposed investment
must be identified as what it is, an investment, not as a bail out. What it
truly is is an investment designed to rescue financial markets and the
Economy.
Bob Holmes
Pretty close to my view. It's a bad
investment but not doing it is worse. A collapse of the financial system
is too grim to contemplate. What's needed here is to get the economy
moving again. Perhaps it's too late. But I do note that the Irish have
moved swiftly and massively.
I am thoroughly of the view that the
government ought not meddle in the economy; but Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
and the Community Reinvestment Act very much DID meddle, forcing banks to
make bad loans to people unlikely to pay them back. If we let the economy
collapse because of this, who pays?
==
The failed bailout
You wrote
the nation would be One Trillion Dollars wealthier
today
I don't understand this comment. Wealth doesn't get
created out of thin air. If this had been done it would have inflated the
currency to the tune of a trillion dollars, making us all poorer. One of the
problems right now is the liquidity that is hiding the fact that a number of
these financial corporations are insolvent. That needs to be resolved
somehow. How would adding more currency to the mix fix anything?
Rollory
What's to understand? Last Friday I
could sell my stock holdings for X Dollars. Monday night I could sell them
for X - 10%X. How have I not lost money?
You say it needs to be resolved somehow.
Suggestions?
==
Subject: The bailout failure
Doctor Pournelle,
I agree with you that there were things to be said in
favor of the bailout. But one thought kept going through my head - that the
very people who created this mess by spending taxpayer dollars are now
trying to fix it by spending more taxpayer dollars.
You've spoken often enough about government's failure
in trying to fix social problems by throwing more money at the problems,
with predictably zero results. How can this problem be fixed by continuing
to prop it up with more hastily printed, inflationary dollars? We'll spend
the money and still have nothing to show for it in ten years, except more
inflation and more grandiose thinking politicians.
If we really want to inspire confidence in the
economy, let's do it the right way, i.e., by sponsoring investment in our
own economy. We might start by cutting federal spending, cutting capital
gains taxes, and by business-friendly legislation to bring manufacturing
back to our country. Yes, it will take a while to get this done - but we
need to do it anyway.
And doing something real and positive will enhance the
economy far more than passing yet another huge spending bill that we cannot
pay for.
BTW, just as an exercise, you might look around and
see if you can find the basis for the estimate of $750 billion. I've heard
it was just a bureaucratic blue-sky number with no real basis in fact.
<http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/
washington/2008/09/bailout-plan.html>
Regards, Brian Claypool
The Bill I saw rejected Monday did much
of what I think you are advocating. Of course it didn't send the Fool
Killer after all those CEO's who left with their golden parachutes, and I
expect that's far more important than halting the financial crisis?
If we wait for the Democrats to cut
taxes and pass business friendly legislation, how long do you think that
will take? I surely agree that were I dictator I could probably solve this
crisis with an Adenaur-like announcement of suspension of regulations and
a plea for everyone who has an idea for a new business to go out and try
it -- I make no doubt that the US is as smart as Germany was back in the
days of the German Economic Miracle -- but I do not think that will
happen.
==
Subject: Lost stock value
Dr. Pournelle,
I'm sure you're getting plenty of e-mail on the
subject, but I thought I'd throw in my 2 cents.
You say that 1 trillion dollars has been lost, and
some regained. This seems incorrect for a number of reasons.
The first I've seen mentioned on your site: stock is
only money when you sell it. Hold onto the stock and it will eventually come
back up, and thus you've lost nothing. If you need income today (or in the
next 10 years), why is your money in stocks? Invest in low risk funds,
rolling CDs, or an FDIC insured savings account if the market is
particularly volatile.
Second, the much of the 'value' of these stocks is not
actually gone when the stock price drops. It has just been shifted to the
person who sold their stock when it was at a higher price. The money hasn't
disappeared, it's been transformed from stock into currency (probably
quickly deposited into those CDs or savings accounts I mentioned).
Finally, the whole argument of creating and destroying
wealth is rather silly on this scale. You stated that the Irish government
is "injecting" $563 billion into their system. The problem here is that they
aren't creating $563 billion of product (gold, computers, crops services,
whatever), they're printing $564 billion in paper money). They've stolen
$563 billion from the CDs and savings accounts and given it back to the
banks.
The problem here is the nature of fiat currency in
general. Our money is based on human confidence, not on actual stuff. We've
shown this week that human confidence makes for a really bad currency. If
people only loaned money that actually exists, we wouldn't be in this mess.
The governments of the world are desperately trying to create human
confidence, and that doesn't seem to be as easily created as paper currency.
Thanks,
Ryan Brown
Hold on! Hold on! Do nothing. Have
confidence, and hold on! That's one set of advice. Some will take it. If
the market recovers they will have done well. If it tumbles more, they
will not. Which will happen? Do we know? Rationally the factories are
still there and the houses have not shrunk. Nor had they in 1935.
Our money is based on human confidence, not on
actual stuff. We've shown this week that human confidence makes for a
really bad currency.
I thought I had been saying that for
months. Nothing is going to be decided by rational thought. It is all
going to be done by guessing what the effect will be on public confidence,
but tempered with the irremovable desire of the political leaders to wet
their beaks in the flow of money. That's what will happen.
==========
Subj: Command Post of the Future becomes Command
Post of Right Now
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htlead/articles/20080930.aspx
>>CPOF is basically a PC based software and
communications system that enables users to collaborate with other units and
officers, and plan and run operations in real-time. Each CPOF PC has three
flat screen displays, which is unusual for your average PC user, but quite
common for corporate heavyweights and Wall Street operators. There are now
over 500 of these CPOF PCs in use at brigade and higher headquarters in Iraq
and Afghanistan (and worldwide). ... CPOF showed up in Iraq four years ago,
and emerged from beta (was officially "released") two years ago.<<
But the neatest thing is the way it was developed.
There had been blue-sky/science-fictional R&D projects, and a few subsystems
-- like Blue Force Tracker -- deployed. But it really came together when
several individual combat divisions, and later some HQs in Iraq, and
supporting ops in Iraq, put together their own improvised CPOFs using
commercially-available components. *Then* the standardization and
procurement bureaucracy started trying to catch up.
Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com
===========
DOG STORY
Mr. Pournelle,
Seeing as you have a dog, I think that you might enjoy
this true story (try putting a version in one of your books!):
....
DOG STORY
One of my co-corkers, Craig Tenhoff, has a wife
(from Canada) who, prior to their marriage, raised and sold Irish
Wolfhounds (imagine a Greyhound 3 times as big and with long heavy fur and
a long, pointed, teeth-lined muzzle like a mammal alligator -- they were
bred to take on wolves one-on-one and WIN!!). This story occurs during
that time.
One day she was driving and stopped at a stop light.
She did not have her doors locked and a man, for some unknown -- but
probably nefarious -- reason, opened the front passenger door and jumped
in.
This might have been a bad thing for my friend's
future wife, except for the fact that the would-be trespasser had not
looked in the back seat of her car prior to jumping in.
Now for the G-O-O-D part!
In the back seat was her favorite Irish Wolfhound
pet. Now, if the dog had attacked the man, this would not be a very
unusual or interesting story, but that did not happen.
What happened was that the dog, very calmly, pushed
his head into the open space between the two bucket seats in front and
then turned his head and LOOKED at the man, not growling or anything. The
dog simply used its body language to say: "YOUR MOVE..." (or possibly:
"ARE YOU FEELING LUCKY ... PUNK?")
The man exited the car and almost tore the door
handle off in the process...
Now THAT is a "JOE COOL" dog!!!
P-E-R-F-E-C-T!!
....
Nathan Okun
============
regarding the dog story
Dr. Pournelle,
Regarding the dog story...
A while back I dropped my wife off at an appointment
in a very small Minnesota town. Not having anything to do, I drove down to
the little tree-filled town park, sat in my car, and read a book while I
enjoyed the quiet fall day.
After a while I noticed about four 5 to 6 year old
kids playing in a little clearing, far from any house, and got kind of
concerned. There was no one else to be seen. The kids were too young, in my
opinion, to be unaccompanied. I was willing to play protector if needed, but
I couldn't tell who was their parents and who was not.
While I was thinking about this, I got a very eerie,
physical feeling that I was being watched. There was no question, it was an
actual sensation, not a suspicion. I looked around carefully, paying more
attention since I knew someone was out there...
...and about thirty feet from the kids, it's mottled
bark-colored body curled up next to a tree in the shade, was a very large
dog. It's head and ears were up, and its flat brown eyes were staring
intently and directly at me. I didn't get any language messages off of the
dog - it was more like being in crosshairs than being talked to - but it was
crystal clear I didn't have to worry about the kids, and that I should stay
in the car. There was a capable and attentive adult already guarding the
children, and it not only didn't need my help, it didn't really want me
around. So I stopped worrying, and went back to reading.
The thing was, you could tell it hadn't just laid down
in the shade, it had picked a duty station where it could watch the children
and the surrounding area, with the tree at its back, in a place where a bad
guy could not easily spot it. And the sense of ownership it had towards
those kids was palpable. I still feel good about that dog.
Name Withheld
Sable and I saw a coyote the other
night. She knew it wasn't a dog.
Huskies ar the friendliest animals in
the world, but they are wolf dogs, and if they think there's a real threat
to the pack, they don't look like friendly dogs any more. They look like
wolves. Sasha (Sable's predecessor) was that way. One day a guy up on the
trail yelled at Roberta. Sasha stopped being so friendly looking. The
yelling stopped and frantic apologies began.
==========
Now Foreclosure Law
Hi Jerry
i do not know how to get the idea out there and acted
on but what now needs to happen is a new foreclosure protocol or law that is
enacted simultaneously with the bailout.
this involves a first intervention whereby the
borrower surrenders fifty percent of his equity on the property in exchange
for a new mortgage at market rates on 75% of the value of the remaining
fifty percent.
the balance of the debt is eaten by the lender in
exchange for a clean fifty percen ownership stake and the borrower retains
the right to purchase that stake at market price upon paying of the new
mortgage, perhaps years later.
In this manner the lender retains a viable customer
who is incentivised to maintain the property. it may even be possible to
revisit properties now owned by the banks.
The majority of borrowers will be able to manage this
and most will eventually prosper.
only when this fails does the lender have the right to
final foreclosure.
In this way the bailout extends to the all the victems
and has a good chance of been a very good solution now and forever more.
And no one seems to understand that the trillion
dollars has already bedn lost. the question is now we are going to pay for
it without collapsing the economy.
arclein
And for those whose equity is negative?
(That is, they owe more than the place is worth.) Of course if prices go
back to bubble level that won't be true. What's needed is magic: a means
of getting housing prices to something like intrinsic value, whatever that
is. And since no one knows what that intrinsic value is -- is my house
worth the $30,000 I paid (as a professor I only had to put up 10% down)
plus the $100,000 in improvements (Footfall windfall, mostly), or the $1.4
million I was offered at the height of the bubble? Probably somewhere in
between, but just where? It takes a market to determine the real value;
and at the moment we don't really have one.
==========
Tuesday's Boyles blog has neat pic of something
really large hitting Earth. It looks like a sombrero.
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/09/30/1467917.aspx
R Hunt
P.S. After the Wachovia collapse I hope you can still
feed the dog.
P.P.S. The new Alaska postage stamp will show the
classic Iditerod scene with a dog team in the middle of an endless plain
with mountains in background. Out Jan. 2.
Like most people my actual savings are
for rainy days; I live off my income or try to (and thanks to subscribers
I managed to do that this year while getting zapped with 50,000 rad and my
writing income essentially vanished); so we can still feed Sable. Being
somewhat wolf like I presume she could hunt gophers if she had to, but
he's a bit of a primadonna and thinks of that as a hobby.
Now if I can get through the next couple
of months so that I can finish some income producing work...
============
Dr. Pournelle,
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/09/darpa-budget-sl.html
The moral of the story is: Don't be too efficient, or
we'll cut your budget!
Thanks,
Ryan Brown
'Twas ever thus.
===========
I periodically clean out the junk mail
folder. This came in last week:
Hi Jerry
It is hard to avoid commentary in the current crisis
situation. First off, we all need to recall that all the bailout money has
been lent out over the past five years and the banks have no way of
recovering it. If this bailout were not to happen they would have to go
under and massive amounts of good mortgages would need to be called in the
midst of a collapsing housing market as happened during the depression. You
will wake up one morning and find that your house is worth ten cents on the
dollar and that your employer who relied on inventory loans is out of
business.
This is a first step that will at least allow a slow
painful recovery while it all sorts itself out.
A second step is to impose a mark to market strategy
as I have described on my blog. That would restore credit to those forclosed
on and create a strong housing market right away.
However, no one is going to understand what I am
saying in enough time to make it happen, so this is academic.
arclein
===========
This was also hiding in junk mail
This one comes from James P. Hogan's website.
http://www.jamesphogan.com/bb/bulletin.php?id=1152
"A Los Alamos-based company called Hyperion Power
Generation, Inc. is developing and commercializing a design pioneered at Los
Alamos National Laboratory for small, factory-sealed, mass-produced,
transportable nuclear power module based on training reactors that have been
safely operated for years in universities and laboratories around the
globe."
"A unit delivers 70 megawatts of heat, which equates
to 27 megawatts of electricity when driving a steam turbine--sufficient to
power 20,000 typical American homes--and is small enough to be transported
on a truck, There are no moving parts to wear down, and units are never
opened on site. The design precludes any possibility of the reaction going
supercritical or resulting in a thermal runaway type of emergency situation.
The waste produced after five years of operation is approximately the size
of a softball and is suitable for fuel recycling."
Disruptive technology with a VENGEANCE.
Can you IMAGINE the looks on the Green faces, when you
point out the inherent safety, near-zero waste, and zero CO2 emissions
(aside from the delivery trucks, once every five years)?
Can you IMAGINE the looks on the coal miner's WIVES'
and MOTHERS' faces, when you tell them "No more black lung disease, EVER!"?
--John
============
Different people affected different ways by the
current financial crisis
Doctor Pournelle:
I see that some of your mail correspondents seem to
think that the current financial mess isn't a big deal. I can see why, too,
and it isn't because they are complete "maroons."
I'm 47, and I'm willing to bet that a lot of your fans
are within five years of that. We started reading you in high school and in
college. Most of us probably look at this as the "down year" for our 401k.
On the other hand, you're my Dad's age. He retired a few years ago and is
getting money from his retirement. Market fluctuations directly reflect the
value of a fund, and the subsequent disbursements. Folks closer to my age
will think, "I'll just keep contributing to my 401k" and this isn't a major
problem. Dad is 72. He's grumpy. He's ticked. Market fluctuations such as
Monday's and Tuesday's affect him directly in the wallet.
The young, used to financing their ways through life,
see the current crisis as an inconvenience. Your generation sees it through
the prism of actual past events. While I'm relatively young, I'm the son of
a stockbroker and recent events have me worried.
For the guy who asked why someone wanting disbursement
didn't invest in CDs or savings accounts? Because the return was less than
the inflation rate! Why didn't he ask if those folks didn't stuff their
savings into mattresses or bury it in the back yard.
I'm actually considering a career change in the near
future. Twenty years of tech writing has gotten a bit stale, and I'm sure
not using my MBA. The thing is, a friend is looking to open a pizza and
kebab shop in a great location (across from a large high school in an
upscale area), and I'm developing his business plan. The way things are
coming together, I might just want to run his business. He's asked me and
I've begged off. The big question facing me is, "Am I nuts to change careers
during economic upheaval?" We'll see.
Anyway, continued recovery from your cancer!
Best,
Bill Kelly
Houston, Texas
Depends on what you are changing from,
but the food service industry is fiercely competitive and operates on very
thin margins.
You are of course correct; it's going to
take a while to recover from this mess, and in the long run we are all
dead.
To the best anyone can tell I am no
longer recovering from cancer which is gone, but simply trying to catch up
on all the work I didn't do in the last year or so. Thanks.
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