A. I heard an NPR commentator say today as I was driving home that it was now TOO LATE to pull out of the stock market and go to cash.
I have been saying for over two decades that the regular American should not be in the stock market at all, but should be keeping cash and buying land. I have been saying this based upon my research insight of 1981.
I said this because the new economic plan at that time was to gut the economy and transfer wealth upwards. I could tell that since this exploitation technique was now being turned upon a central, not an already “dependent” economy, there would be a world recession within 30 years.
I was amazed at the time because I realized that those in charge of the United States were not even the narrow, selfish nationalists I had theretofore believed them to be. Rather, their motto was ALL EXPLOITATION, ALL THE TIME. They were completely willing to destroy not only long but also medium term viability. They were perfectly willing to bring everything to an end within fewer than one hundred years, so long as they and their friends could be rich while they lived. Does it really get that bad? Yes, it really gets that bad.
B. Every time I have said it was time to get out of the stock market, people have told me no, stay in for the long term. Now NPR is saying it is too late. I was right and I knew it.
In any case, do not now expand your investments in anything intangible. Now more than ever, you want direct ownership of land and metals. Buy a square yard of land and lease it for a high price to the phone company as a place to put a phone pole. That kind of investment will pay you far better over time than stocks, especially now.
Mines, oil, and gas wells will be popular but I suggest very strongly that you buy land with water on it and water rights to land owned by others. Water is the asset which will most appreciate in value after 2050. Buy it now.
I have been right before.
*
Meanwhile I am too late for yoga and too lazy to shop, so I have no wine. To write this post I ate another piece of that Godiva chocolate one of you left me anonymously over the summer. Now I have to invent something to cook. I surmise it will involve canned tomatoes, tofu, and fresh shiitake mushrooms from my genuine organic mushroom log. I will have to put basil and chives into whatever it is as well, since my basil and chives are getting too long.
Everyone should really get one of these excellent logs, as they produce many, many mushrooms and fresh mushrooms from the log are NOTHING like those you buy, they are infinitely superior and I am not exagerrating. I will have to add basil and chives to these mushrooms, as my basil and chives are getting altogether too leafy and long. They must be eaten. Cartago delenda est. How do you say “They are to be eaten” in Latin?
I will put a large pot of water on to boil for pasta. Meanwhile I will cook onions and garlic slowly in the last of my olive oil (I really need to get groceries). I will add the tomatoes and cook them down, without white wine (I really need to get groceries). I will then add pasta to the boiling water, and cubed tofu, sliced mushrooms, chopped basil, and chives to the sauce. Everything will cook for a short while. Then it will be done.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Hey, profacero, long time no see
Sounds like I better check it out!
Cooking holds my world together. Getting enough flavor into tofu is a challenge. I hate shopping too and avoid it, although it’s a pleasant enough activity around here.
We just divested ourselves of a property in an Oregon beach community; however it was in order to buy out relatives and take full ownership of the house next door, my late mother in law’s house, which we now rent out. I kind of enjoy being a mean old landlady (Actually, I’m quite nice to our renters, who happen to be excellent tenants.).
We have another rental and a condo in addition to our primary residence. We have never played the stock market. Many we know whose assets were better than ours once have lost a lot of money. We never bought into the idea that we could be capitalists too! That thinking is for fools.
Our condo’s close to where our kids live in case we get wiped out in a natural disaster or encounter a health crisis.
With the exception of the condo we bought everything at the bottom of the real estate market.
Needless to say, most people don’t think like us. Too bad they don’t. I mean, the fecklessness of others menaces even the prudent.
Staying in the middle class means never forgetting your scruples. I don’t mind appearing rather dull and unwilling to take certain chances if it means I can go on taking care of myself.
Oh, I forgot to mention the stock options we got on a start up and cashed in. That was a break that is usually not available to the peons. We bought property with the money.
Hi Tom! Yes you’ll love these mushrooms. And thanks a *million* for the suggestions on the reading, those are great ideas.
Hattie – OK I get it, this is the attitude of the actual middle classes. I just had a long conversation on this with a friend I who is in business and whom I always think of as more savvy than I but he doesn’t get it. It is weird – people in the U.S. expect their salaries to cover them, and look to the stock market for investment. I guess many aren’t in a position to buy a second property, I’m not, but it is what the struggling Latin American upper working and lower middle classes do – buy buildings and things, don’t speculate in intangibles – and it is what people from non moneyed backgrounds think of first here in Louisiana as well. So now I get it – this is the genuinely middle class attitude!
P.S. yes – flavor into tofu. I only manage it sometimes. The pasta turned out OK but not world shaking.
To do tofu right I have to really concentrate. The best tofu I made was when I had just had dental surgery and was still high on the drug residue. Nothing better to do than follow a genuine Chinese recipe from a good cookbook to a T and did it ever work. It involved coating the tofu in beaten egg and frying. You did the same thing with eggplant and mixed them together. There were chiles too, I used chiles de arbol (which appear in Chinese dishes, skinny hot red dried ones). I wish I had the full instructions.
Tangibles. Yes. It is odd that we are in this position, because for years, when we lived in Europe, we owned nothing. We were nonetheless middle class because of our education and jobs. We had a very nice standard of living, but a modest one, as did most of our peers.
The most middle class people, or bourgeois people if you will, are the Dutch.
The thing is that property, especially if you own it outright, supplements income now, if necessary, with rents, and is all the while ALSO gaining value. And if one’s plans change, one can USE it, and not have to suddenly buy something or pay rent. It is hard to beat.
Dutch, I suspect you’re right but would like to hear more. I have trouble figuring out how the (or some) middle classes and the bourgeoisie overlap. The bourgeoisie own the means of production and are not aristocrats, but many of the middle classes don’t own a thing. It’s an interesting term, class, I’d like to study (more evidence, then, for why I need that B.S. in Economics!).
I’m aiming to get some land in Zimbabwe perhaps. If Stewart and I were to co-own it, we could co-use it, and there would always be someone to take care of it. I’d love to get about five acres, and then gradually build a cottage.
Where so many people are getting screwed is on pensions and 401 Ks.
Property has been the investment that has paid off best for us. As you say, you can hold onto property and rent it when the market’s low and sell it when it’s high. All the property we own gets a lot of use, by us, by renters, by our kids and friends. Paper just sits there.
We were reflecting that if we had not made a down payment on a house for our daughter in the early 90’s, when she left for Europe she might have never come back. She had something to return to and bring her partner back to: a house. She and her partner love it and take care of it with great enthusiasm.
These are the ways to use money that create family stability and cohesion across generations.
I KNOW you’re right about buying land and metal. Still trying to get enough information that would lead to the remote possibility of buying some Jamaican semi-coastline around Robin’s Bay. That’s complicated in that we will soon have enough to make a down payment on a house in N.O. (it’s so stupid to keep renting) OR to enter an agreement with *lots* of other people for one acre of land there (if we were able to negotiate such a complex enterprise). My gut tells me that it would actually be a better option to buy land in Jamaica than to mortgage a house here, but that just flies in the face of all practical considerations.
P.S. How’s yoga going for you? I’m starting a teacher training program in April…
J – definitely do it. It’s perfect.
A.F. – I’ve got the same dilemma. I’d have to sell the house here to buy elsewhere. It’s tempting but impractical. Yoga – wow, you’re teaching – I am not at all advanced. But it is *good,* I finally found a studio that is really *good* again. In N.O. I’d go to one of the several good ones, but up here it’s harder to find serious yoga.
Hattie – Yes indeed, 401Ks and pensions, it is criminal, and/but people also have to realize and not put extra money into these things. Speaking of which: I should maybe stop doing that with my 401 plan. I think I put in an extra $100 a month, it ends up being less because it is before taxes, and it sounds smart, but is that even a good idea now? (It’s TIAA-CREF, the 401x for faculty.)
Non crazy people are now recommending that we get money out of banks.
http://www.infowars.com/?p=4581
What do you think is the point at which one should determine that it’s time to leave the U.S.? I know it’s probably impossible to suggest an exact turn of events that would be *the* signal. I worry so much about the frog-in-boiling-water syndrome, which I know I have. Also, a decision on where to go would be even more important than the going itself.
Just to clear up–I’m certainly not teaching yoga, just entering a program in April in which I will learn the fundamentals of teaching yoga. I’m still a beginner, too. I figure it can’t hurt to have another edifying but unprofitable skill 🙂
Well, a colleague of mine here became a yoga teacher and then a lawyer, so one never knows!
Time to leave U.S., I wish I could figure that out. I think it really depends on where to and in what conditions. Many places will also be affected by the U.S. economy, already are; the U.S. is a much better place to be than, say, Peru unless you have the perfect organic farm there or something, and are perfectly solvent, and have multiple ways to get water.
In terms of politics it has been time for some time, I think – since the Patriot Act and all. On the other hand, the U.S. has a really rich culture and a lot of beautiful landscape and so on, so it’s hard to tell and again hard to tell.
P.S. And on this:
“Rather, their motto was ALL EXPLOITATION, ALL THE TIME. They were completely willing to destroy not only long but also medium term viability. They were perfectly willing to bring everything to an end within fewer than one hundred years, so long as they and their friends could be rich while they lived.”
I of all people SHOULD KNOW that empires underdevelop their centers as well as their peripheries. Look at frickin’ FELIPE SEGUNDO and related monarchs. History rests its case. Yet note how well I was taught not to see that we, too, were one such, and that freaky though the U.S. was abroad, it still protected its own. Hah!
How does the US protect its own?
That’s the point. We whose parents’ generation were saved from the Depression and so on by the New Deal (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) were taught to think so and could see evidence of it. People from Big Bill Haywood on had forced the government to recognize rights of workers. The robber barons of the late 19th century had been defeated by antitrust laws. Now MLK was brandishing the constitution and getting it improved. Etc.
We learned that to have a democracy you had to have an informed citizenry, so that freedom of the press was essential. We did not have national identity cards and so could drop out of sight in the big wide spaces if we so desired. Wiretapping was illegal (COINTELPRO was still a secret). Etc.
Most importantly, we learned that it was in the interest of the corporations that people have money so as to be a market, and that people be comfortable enough not to revolt. Therefore, we deduced that out of self interest the government and the corporations would not ruin the economy.
All of this is false when one looks at it more closely, but the biggest falsehood is that empires protect themselves … Spain did *not* develop and “modernize” itself economically with the money it got from America, nor did it join modernity in other ways, either.
I would like to know more about that period. Was it just a *weird* decision they made in the late 15th century, to have the Inquisition and all instead of go on to modernity, or is there a method in’t? I would like to look closely at all empires and see what happened. Of course I read at one time that thick and thin book EMPIRE by Hardt and Negri. They say empire is everywhere, so of course it stands to reason that it would be at the center, is at the center, etc.
But as dependency theory points out, crises are felt first at the margins, so when the center implodes or rather when the crisis becomes visible also at the center, then you know … you’re coming up on a shift.
But I am not an expert in these matters.
Interesting. I can’t add much to what you say.
From my perspective, empire protects itself by denying that there are any problems, apart from minor glitches that can easily be dealt with over time. Those who have absorbed the philosophy of empire will not allow that the social system they serve can be rigorously criticised. This makes them feel uncomfortable.
I think that’s astute and true. So being “reasonable” (or tepid) is necessary because empire has to be presented as democracy, etc.
Tepidity seemed to be the ideal in the spirit we were aiming to achieve in our students, as middle school teachers.
Tepidity was the atmosphere in which I was taught, during my last two years of high school in Australia.
I once was quite surprised to see a primary school excursion (when I was on ‘work experience’) where the mood was really much lower key and less exuberant than my own equivalent primary school excursions. The facilitator afterwards said, “that was perfect!” I had to wonder why. The whole event had seemed simply restrained to me.
And then …
But we will leave that alone for the time being.
Restraint, it’s the British way and it is why I don’t like being East of the Mississippi, or of the Rockies, even. It’s fake, which is what irritates me. On the other hand it is what Kurtz failed to exercise.
Profacero,
Thanks for following w/ your financial opinions.
I lament that I really don’t have much better to do than leave the half my belongings I transfered from a savings bank to a mutual fund in the mutual fund…but at least I still have the other half + earnings since I first put that half in the mutual fund, rather than having invested it, too, in that mutual fund over time. At first it was forgetfulness, but then it was embracing “forgetfulness” thanks to a post I read here.
K – Haha! I can’t do a thing – owe money on the house, have no savings I ever hold onto (I had a savings account but then I spent it on my post Gustav roof, something like that all it happens) and my retirement is in mutual funds and that is required. I wish I owned buildings outright and had the rest in gold or something. But then I’m one of the people who have been heavily advised to depend on credit and the stock market and told it was retrograde and immature not to do so!
And all: observe this:
“The more likely avenue will be a raid on private pensions. The Clinton administration’s appointee, Alicia Munnell, as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy argued that private pensions should face a capital levy to make up for the fact that their accumulation was tax free. I expect that the federal government, faced with its own bankruptcy, will resurrect this argument, as it will be preferable to printing money like a banana republic or Weimar Germany.”
From Alex Jones:
http://www.infowars.com/?p=4607
Profacero,
How do you do conceptualize the foreign land / precious metals thing, with all that you know about abuse of people that goes into first-worlders gathering up such things on the earth?
I get the impression you know even more than I do about the abuses…so if I feel stuck, surely you, too, must’ve had some feeling stuck.
Will you please share w/ me whether you, for example, put restrictions what you mean in your head when you think “land” or “metals,” in terms of “land” or “metals” that you’d be willing to invest in if you had the spare money?
I don’t think the Australian mode of restraint is all that repressed (which is what I understand by “British”.) It’s a postmodernist form of restraint — ‘damp’, I would call it.
Further to my note above, I think it is a feature of mind-body dualism to presume that constraint and absolutely vulgar lack of constraint are the two natural alternatives. There is an element of truth to this view, but hardly to the degree that contemporary Western metaphysics as it is practiced would appear to imply.
It really is worth looking into more. I would say that the spontaneous vitalism of many African cultures (indeed perhaps due to the historical lack of the discipline imposed because of a relative lack of a regime of mind-body dualism) can be a liability in terms of political instability, wars, etc.
However, the counterbalancing advantage is that such culture’s do not consider it “a sin” if children let loose and really enjoy themselves.
ooh, out of control apostrophe above.
sorry for it.
Katie: I am thinking in this post from a completely middle class point of view, not from the point of view of doing anything of any ethical value. I recommend buying land in cash, and things in cash, with this cash being the hardest possible cash. This is what one would think of doing, or would already have been doing for decades, from a non American, or non First World point of view. I swear it, if you have any money at all, these are the things to do. If you do not they are also the things to do.
I am speaking of already extant pieces of land and already refined metals. Not of further exploitation of virgin lands and such. But remember, I am not an economist, only an observer.
Jennifer – yes. It is indeed worth looking into more and in that direction.
Even if the non-virgin land is only “owned” (to be sold to a new buyer, such as oneself) because of first-world-imposed laws?
This is what keeps me stuck.
Anyway, thanks for the answer. 🙂
K – from whom has it been expropriated? I’m not recommending ruthlessly unethical behavior. All I mean is don’t invest in paper or, by the way, in mortgages. I need more context and info to be able to say whether I think a particular plan is horrid. If the government is selling pieces of national forest for tract homes that’s awful, etc.
My point here is really about the impracticality of gambling and speculation, and the prevalence of the desire to get rich through it.
I see.
*sigh* I’m disappointed–I thought we could pay off the home I’ve just moved into if necessary. (For now, the tax break and the protection from the government seizing it in certain types of pennylessness seem worth keeping it as a mortgage. Apparently it’s easier to have your house seized to get money out of you if you own it outright. Still, I’d sure been hoping we could’ve. Shoot.)
I mean, not a mortgage as an investment. If you buy property as an investment, do it in cash. If it’s a place to live, sure, have a mortgage, don’t rent!
Having house seized to get money out of – oh yes, if you owe other money? Good reason not to pay off house.
I just mean all other investments need to be really conservative. Even a regular mortgage is conservative. I mean all these other schemes we’ve been told are normal, like living on credit, having stocks instead of pensions, etc., THOSE are very messed up.
I wish I had as much in savings as I do in debt and it is scary and limiting. It has been limiting for some time. But there is not a lot I can do about it.
And it’s interesting, all my life I’ve been encouraged not to have money or savings – “don’t get a job, ask me for the things you need and I will decide to give you some of them,” “stay in school,” and especially “finance your assistant professor professional expenses on credit, then you will get raises and pay it off.” All of this is just a strategy to keep people dependent and hooked into a machine. Slavery.
Wow.
Is it that unfamiliar?
But with all the realizations I’ve had lately on instructions on how not to be a person, I am guessing my education has been particularly bad. (All non dependence on family was bad, and all non negativity was dangerous. Seeing how clearly and how much I was taught this I am horrified.)
Still I know many people who get sold this financial bill of goods. There are a lot of professors at my institution who owe more than they make in a year and the debt has been racked up to finance their jobs.
By e-mail I got this comment:
“I’ve decided to start looking at the economy and the US through different eyes. The model I am going to use is that the economy (Wall St) is a drunk. So I ask myself, what motivates a drunk? And the answer is the next high. And anything that is not a high, is a cause for crisis and melodrama. Beneath it all is a need to control. And the drunk controls most effectively through chaos and destabilization. The chaos and instability keeps the victims eyes– (that would be us…the ones who really keep the whole thing going…or do we) –off of the drunk and what he is doing. Which all mysteriously keeps us focused on the drunk and his intentions. The only way to take care of ourselves and survive is to focus on our needs. Which brings me back to your strategy–acquire stuff.
“The 3rd world is perhaps the sober one. Perhaps they see the drunk for who he is and just ignore him realizing there is nothing they can do about it. People in power are who they are and they just go about their lives.
“People in power like the drunk crave more power. They can never have enough. I think the trick for survival is to focus on what we need and realize that unlike the movie of the week special where you can get a restraining order against the drunk…the drunk will drop in on us whenever he feels like it!!!!!
“So once again, you’ve been saying it for years!!!!!”
This person gives me too much credit – it being someone who has said illuminating things to me about the world for some time. I think the analysis here is interesting. I particularly like “unlike the movie of the week special where you can get a restraining order against the drunk…the drunk will drop in on us whenever he feels like it” because it reminds us that that IS the movie of the week version of life (modeling the world as it “should” be). This comment by me on the comment is a tangent, but AH WELL.
And now the retirement office is saying we can’t change retirement plans for the time being. I think this is just so as to avoid being swamped by panic but it *looks* like that first move to the government taking the money … I am overly paranoid, I discern. But this blog is literature and so I am reporting these literary notes 😉