We need to have us a discussion about barriers to entry. The B-school concept is simple enough: One of the reasons that there are not 500 automakers in the USA is because of barriers to entry. Said barriers are the start-up obstacles that any new competitor must overcome in a world of crony-capitalism. Old-guard players … Read More

I don’t know if it’s the NRA who has slammed legislation through 48-states, but a buddy of mine up the street has been charged with a misdemeanor. The heinous crime of this chum? Well, he lives on County Road 404 and a neighbor of his likes to hunt. But the catch is, my neighbor has … Read More

A couple of points on  whether we should do away with Interest tops this morning’s discussion in our Focus section. No, not as in Sharia law.  As in simply eliminate all the financial shenanigans that seem to accompany the game of charging “interest.”  Might change business cycles, too… After that, I suppose the chart comparing … Read More

I thought we’d begin this morning with an update because reader Bruno was shocked when I wrote down how much the M1 (seasonally adjusted) money supply had been slammed by the Fed recently. Since the H.6 Money Stocks report is updated every Thursday (except Holidays, of course) we wanted to give you the latest figures. … Read More

If you are going to survive an ELE (extinction level event) it might be a fair thing to print off in your “Secret Sauce that I Might Need Some Day Journal.” (SSTIMNSDJ for short). What got me onto this totally overlooked part of prepping? Two things: A) Friends of ours are buying a mountain home … Read More

The Mystery of the Consumer Prices Rise Somewhere there is a statistical prick (or prickette/prickee) who needs to be called out. Here we are, less than 10 days after the election and what do we get? A press release like this one saying: “The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.4 percent … Read More

A discussion about how NOT to prepare for Thanksgiving is in order around here, although I’m sharing it with YOU and not necessarily “she who must be obeyed” until after our guests are down the road a week from Sunday. The first thing you don’t want to do is do a one month leisurely project … Read More

There are two terrible problems for the new administration to deal with (other than faithless Electors and Oregon insanity which we will get to in a moment):  One is the trade problem and the other is the rate problem. What we will focus on is propagation speed of economic change.  It isn’t like driving a … Read More

We have several dates for a Market High we are tracking – and the differences in what drives the dates are absolutely fascinating to think about. Why worry about a market high? Even some of today’s youngest workers are in the market, whether they know it, or not, through their 401-K or retirement programs at … Read More

Monday was spent in a mad rush to finish the guest quarters – before the guests arrive next Wednesday. So far, the plans are great, but we won’t finish the mud work until today and that leaves this afternoon and tomorrow morning for priming and then finish paint Thursday. Decorating, do-dads, and some trim on … Read More

For a country that was once able to wage war on two fronts (Japan and Europe in WW II) our present inability to think straight and execute treasonably is nothing short of breath-taking. Seriously? After literally saving Australia’s butt in the War back when, the Australian prime minister didn’t have the respect to tell our … Read More

For the attention deficit, we will start with the graphics first. I told several people that I would have to call them back Monday because Elaine and I are in the middle of a large remodeling project of the guest quarters. Elaine does the design part:  “Here take this old sionk and vanity and turn … Read More

This morning we have to look at a pile of data, including more of the historical analogs between the presidency of Herbert Hoover and the election this past week of Donald Trump. So bean up (or light up) and into the data, if you please. We have two date ranges for the all-time market high … Read More