Cycles: The world is full of them

I don’t think you have to be a rocket scientist or a Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry/Physics or Literature to know the world operates on natural cycles and human-created ebbs and flows.

We live by a clock that tells us – those that function on a routine – to get up and go out and change our planet. We watch the seasons for when to plant and when to feel better about ourselves. (Seasonal Affect Disorder…)  We determined the cycle of the galaxy – ask our Mayan friends, oh yeah, we destroyed them – and wait on a big event that likely will come and go without a wimper…like the Millennium Bug.

We design our lives and livelihood around elections, stock market rises (and falls) and the next big thing in tech, entertainment or social discord. We pray every Sunday if we are faithful Christians; every Saturday if Jewish; and multiple times per day if Muslim. The larger cycles of weather (El Nino, the ocean currents, ice ages, et. al.) influence farming, living arrangements, and where we find ourselves in the future.

We just function on a cycle – ask any woman.

But the cycles created by other bipeds are the most annoying, for they, usually leave those without the resources and connections twisting in the wind hoping to catch a sail boat that will export them to safety and security land again.

We’ve seen this phenomenon with Globalization. The creative destruction of America – shipping off costly labor forces to cheaper lands in the SE Asia. This cycle is neither inherently good or bad – it just is. But the powers behind such a shift can be seen as promotely a timely shift in power from one arena to another…at the expense of Americans.

As Britain dominated the 19th century, and America the 20th, so shall China dominate the 21st. But this is all about empires – the rise and fall, the ebb and flow – and they too will see someone take over (or take back) their dominion.

Meanwhile, forces unseen, but often spoken about, will continue to contort the world to their cycle of power and supremacy. The cycle will go on – passively, like this post – but will be just as willing to punch the clock and do the time here.

Let me know when the rinse cycle is up on your washer. It’s time to dry ourselves out.

Reading List: How I Spent My Recession of 2008-2009

While I spent the greater part of 2008 fighting an uphill battle against gas and food prices, the United States slipped into ‘recession’ as defined as 2 quarters of negative GDP growth. (Those that are sticklers for such terminology.) With that in mine, I began the search for whys and hows behind the stock market’s reactions to the housing crisis and the inevitable loss of jobs as business slowed to a George W. Bush’s synaptic firing pace.

 

Money, money, money!!! USA is out of it!

The mid-summer reading list included: Bad Money, The Two Trillion-Dollar Meltdown, Chain of Blame, The Dollar Crisis, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets, and Twilight in the Desert. Each offers insights into the various parts of why America is no longer the country our grandparents thought they built back up to supremacy from Depression in 1945.

 

Bad Money reflects how neoconservatives have made free-market Capitalism a chant from Wall Street to the West Coast mega churches; that debt has become more and more entrenched in our psyche as normal as we use houses as ATMs; and, we have a serious need to monitor what Wall Street is doing as it has more and more complex methods to hide mistakes (and profit wildly in doing so) while manufacturing has disappeared.

 

Could it be more like Eight or Ten Trillion?

Chain of Blame and The Two Trillion Dollar Meltdown are short analyses of what some of the underlying factors were behind the housing crisis of 2007-2008 starting with the 1968 elections of Nixon, gold standard change, 1970’s stagflation, the rise again of Wall Street in the 1980’s, and banking and currency fiascos since that time.

 

Twilight in the Desert describes the politics and the natural resource realities facing America in the near future while we still depend on Saudi Arabian oil and some Middle East stability. (Neither being a good bet.) The process of creating the oil (the gas) we pump thinking it can last forever is discussed quite thoroughly by the investment banker.

Billionaire George Soros clocks in with The New Paradigm, one which he was unusually successful in the pre-financial crisis 2007-08. He determines that markets are neither rational nor efficient. Bubbles need thorough understanding and analysis by economists. It also helps to understand that Soros moves markets via his tongue and rarely does anyone consider his words without an ulterior motive. 

 

Hey brother, can you spare a dime?

As the year went on, and my budget constricted (with trips to Barnes and Nobles vanishing), I turned to ways to make headway in the ‘new global’ economy talked about by Nobel Prize winners in Economics, Joseph Stiglitz (Globalization and Its Discontents) and Paul Krugman (Depression Economics), and a consultant of Wall Street and author, David Smick, of The World Is Curved fame. More knowledge, but also, more confusion as to how to jumpstart America.

The world is definitely something. Just not sure what shape, surface, or idea it truly becoming. But I do need to get ahead in it or else fall off of it.

 

Are you an outlier?

Ahead of the Curve, Bulletproof Your Job, Finding The Work You Love, and Outliers were added to my basket of books to figure out what to do to prevent me from experiencing the next recession as harshly as this one has been all ready. (Christmas I spent all of $75 on gifts. I spent $360 to fix my inefficient car to keep a job in a dying medium: newspapers.)

 

Ahead of the Curve is akin to a Scott Turow’s quasi-One MBA. Harvard is a place to succeed. Nothing else matters much – but partying for MBAs. Philip Delves Broughton MBA journey though lacks drama, but does give one the dryness that is being a corporate clone.

Bulletproof reflects on what all of us should do to be the A performer that has to be inside us in order to keep a job. Stop trying to play grab ass with the stenopool (that’s a dated term) and focus instead on your education and willingness to be a team player always.

Outliers might be the ultimate outlier in this grouping as it just shows what it taking to achieve success through unusual serendipity, timing and birth, and practice, practice and practice.

 

So teacher, that’s what I did on my recession vacation.

U.S. Economic Plan 2009: The Path to Economic Independence

Are you ready to create a new Nation?

 

Recently, I took a hiatus from blogging heavily by playing an old game called Colonization. (Sid Meier, of Civilization fame, developed Colonization.) Now, the game is nearly 15 years old, the graphics suck, and the play is slow and antiquated. However, it does one thing fairly well: it mirrors the ideas of trade, money, tax hikes, and infrastructure building, or in short, the economic planning of a fledgling nation.

 

We no longer are fighting for independence from a tyrannical king, but we Americans are fighting the forces of Globalization during the midst of a once-in-lifetime economic mess. Housing sector damaged. Heavy industry nearly gone. Financial institutions teetering on the brink of collapse. The United States is no longer like it once was during its economic heyday of 1946-1972, before I was born.

 

In my lifetime, the forces of international competition from Japan, China, India, Mexico, Brazil and our former cold war foe, Russia, among others, have left us mired in a quandary of our own making: stuck believing the once considered impervious industrial might may resurrect while under investing in education and technology and overlooking real budgetary and fiscal problems for the last 25 years. And the solutions to these often opposing forces will require great sacrifice and a new vision to stem the tide of a soon-to-be overwhelming problem of under utilization and individual obsolesce.

 

We cannot continue to ignore serious flaws in how we promote our nation’s success or fail to compete in a new international landscape.

 

Investment and New Trade. How we maximize trading partners is as much internal as it is external. We have logically tried to develop trading partners that can sustain and merit such ties. However, how many avenues or ventures have we short-changed in order to help another nation at the expense of developing a new product or technology base in America? Investment in eco-friendly and next generation technology has to be promoted to keep America at the pinnacle of world economy. Resting on our laurels of the 20^th century is not an option.

 

Therefore, these would be my recommendations if I had the ear of new President:

 

$200 billion in immediate investments will be made in the U.S. auto industry over a period of 4 years. We will revamp the assembly lines; construct models that not only achieve high fuel economy, but will use electric, hydrogen, natural gas and battery designs. As a result, many of the service stations we currently use, will also see much modification and upgrades. Road projects will be reflected in this new technology that all Americans must familiarize themselves with. This does not mean that every worker currently employed via this industry will stay – the industry will and has to become leaner and more efficient across the board.  A $4,000 voucher for new “eco-vehicle” purchases will buttress these new programs while getting older, less efficient vehicles off American roads.  Which leads us to the next program.

 

 

$125 billion in environmental programs will be afforded over the next four years. These industries include solar, wind, geothermal (in concert with housing) and tidal/hydro programs will be researched, implemented and launched. The immediate deployment of green workers in “green alleys”, those with all ready depressed housing markets, will result in improving current homes while harnessing designs for next-generation housing. Water usage, natural resource depletion and pressing environmental issues must be met head on by our scientists and business leaders. This broad investment will spur independent and private development with the hopes of turning America into a far more effective and efficient country. It will also lead to an “exportable commodities” that will be our way of stemming Global Warming and improving the world’s health. We will be the world leader in environmental investment, incorporating technology, manufacturing ideas and data systems into the mix. We will also assist those companies that create environmental programs, across all sectors, through tax incentives.

 

$125 billion will be afforded in additional funding of education in various programs related to these and other new technologies. Our kids, our parents, and even grandparents, must be adept at using all levels of innovation and global tools to compete and succeed in this world. Many private sector partners will introduce America to these skills quickly. We can no longer wait to disseminate these skills to only the financially well off or tech savvy. Each of us needs to learn everyday – some need to catch up to their peers around the world. The new technology officer of the administration will work with the top information technology firms, small-but-innovative outfits and large-scale businesses to adopt both at home and abroad a learning network that can educate and alleviate education and technology gaps apparent in our society.

 

$200 Billion in direct funding of infrastructure projects and urban planning will be instituted. Some of these projects may have “to tear down in order to create” because we have misused land and placed housing developments in areas that do more harm or cost us opportunities to support our population as it increases in size. Americans most affected by these projects will be adequately and uniquely compensated in that they will garner first access to the “eco-houses” we intend to build, if they desire. Inconvenient though this seems, the long-term is what we are striving for.

 

Our destiny as a great nation depends on immediate action. As intrusive as it does or may appear, doing nothing or waiting for a market solution to appear on the horizon may prolong a painful readjustment to economic forces. Many of your neighbors need help now. Waiting is time lost to an enemy that has no time constraints.

We are not a nation of haves and have nots. We are an American nation that fought and won freedom time and time and time again. We are all sharers of this land’s great abundance. We have to promote as much our economic fairness as we should promote the ability to grasp for that extraordinary potential of the human spirit and garner the rewards of that spirit. We will be better each day ahead – together, as one nation on a blessed mission.

Having the boots, roads, homes, vehicles and necessities to an independent life are at the foundation of this nation. We are all better when our neighbor can assist us readily and we in turn can assist them. This is our way of assisting – to promote economic diversification, establish new exportable commodities, rebuild the highways and highways of the human mind to a better, lasting prosperity. The long-term will see a better America for this investment that will lead to incalculable job growth, a technological superiority and ingenuity, yet envisioned.

 

This would be my plan.

 

And all this from a 15-year old game…