Ivanka Trump was in Eaton Rapids yesterday

 

Belladonna informed me that Ivanka Trump made a campaign stop in tiny, Eaton Rapids, Michigan (population 5200 not counting dogs, cats and pigeons).

I suppose it doesn't matter where she stops given the internet and media's broad reach.

Still, it shows Trump reaching out to small-town USA. Eaton Rapids is not NYC or a mega-media-market. We are run-of-the-row Americans tackling life's problems as best we know how, one day at a time.

I am tickled the Trump campaign chose Eaton Rapids but the campaign could have thrown a dart and hit any one of 500 Michigan towns that were equally worthy.

As a side-note:

Men, particularly young men, need work.

In my limited experience, men settle down when we have work. Otherwise we are like motors with no load. Without meaningful work we rev-up until we are red-lined...and beyond. Then we go unstable.

How many of the Antifa and BLM goons lack meaningful work? I would guess a significant number of them.

Trump's America promises opportunity, work and reward.

The other guy offers cotton-candy and diet pop. Initially tempting but ultimately unsatisfying and detrimental.

Fine Art Tuesday

 

Norman Rockwell born 1894 in New York City. Died in 1978

Now get off your computer and vote if you haven't already.

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer

According to Marx capital is the wealth (including not only money, but—more essentially—also land, buildings, machinery and hired labor) that is devoted to the production of more wealth. The capitalist hires workers, who make practical use of that existing capital (factories, machines, raw materials, etc.) to create additional value which then automatically belongs to the capitalist. This retained surplus value becomes part of the expanded capital that the capitalist then owns.

If an ordinary person, a worker, has some money saved up, or still available at the end of the month, that is not “capital”! (At least in the Marxist sense.) The reason is that the worker has no way of making use of that money to create more value, more capital. The worker does not own a factory, machinery, the necessary raw materials, etc., that would allow him to do that. On the other hand, even if a capitalist is deeply in debt, and needs to borrow more money to keep functioning, if he already owns a factory, machinery, raw materials, and purchases labor power (i.e., hires workers) he already has a tremendous amount of capital, and is in a position to make use of it to generate additional capital. 

Money can be used as capital (e.g., to build factories, buy machinery and raw materials, hire workers, etc.). Money which is actually used for such purposes is called money capital. But if money, whether a small amount or a large amount, is not used for such purposes, it is not capital.               Marxist definition of "Capital" from The Dictionary of Revolutionary Marxism

 

I want to highlight one bit of their definition:

If an ordinary person, a worker, has some money saved up, or still available at the end of the month, that is not “capital”! (At least in the Marxist sense.) The reason is that the worker has no way of making use of that money to create more value, more capital. The worker does not own a factory, machinery, the necessary raw materials, etc., that would allow him to do that.

While that may have been true in 1848 it is not true today.

Today, any person can participate in create more value and more capital by investing in the stock market or bond market via mutual funds. They can invest in their brain via formal education or through the intelligent use of the internet. They can start a business and sell on eBay, Etsy, farmer-markets or push-carts. They can give back-rubs or clean houses or do yard-work.

The keystone that locks the archway of Marxist thought together is a lie. The premise at the center of Marxist thought is as goofy as a seven-sided square.

Peeling the reality just a tiny bit, the "ordinary person" owns stock in the form of insurance policies and retirement plans. There is not a safe filled with stacks of $100 bills waiting for them to make a claim on their auto insurance.

The paycheck that will land in an "ordinary person's" account is currently racing around the world in the 24 hour bond market. That dollar does not go to sleep in NYC. Rather, it races to Tokyo and then to Europe before the sun rises again in the United States.

The streets the "ordinary person" drives on were funded, in part, by bonds sold by the state or city. Those bonds were purchased by "surplus value" seeking a safe haven. Without the capitalistic bond market there would not have been money to rent equipment, purchase concrete and steel reinforcement and to pay the workers. The "ordinary person" would be driving on crappy, 3rd World roads to get to work.

Marxists have a very childish view of how the economy works.

1959 Olds Delta 88 Speedometer

 

 

Youtube video, 31 second run-time. Turn off sound before watching. The music...it hurts the ears.

My mother drove a 1959 Olds Delta 88.

Instead of the classic dial-and-hand arrangement, the stylists demanded the equivalent of an LED light-bar.

The engineers executed the demand by wrapping a long, slender cylinder with a decal similar to the one shown.

The idea never caught on. Probable reasons include people did not like the implied judgement (i.e. Big Brother) of the green-orange-red colors and the lack of precision. Because the bar ramps, does the driver go by the top of the color bar or the bottom?

There was also the issue of the needle or hand of the traditional dial arrangement being easier to mentally calculate when an accelerating vehicle would hit a certain speed. The greater mass of the rotating cylinder undoubtedly lagged the actual speed by a larger amount than the lower-mass needle.

AND as long as we are talking about style and design

A graphic showing French military headwear.

I did a tiny bit of research. Those large, sail-like hats were wide-brimmed hats with the brim pinned up. The common soldier un-pinned the brim when it was raining. The hat would be spun around based on what the soldier was carrying so it would not get bumped off.

Officers, on the other hand, pinned insignia on their pinned-up brims. Given the clouds of smoke given off by black powder cannon, that may have been a functional way of identifying officers. Pretty handy for snipers, too.

Counterparty Risk

From the comments:

Another problem which will become more evident is that the mortgage debt on these rentals was sold in tranches to investors world wide. And a significant portion was sold to retirement funds in the US to fund retirement payments. And it's easy to see where that is heading when the defaults and foreclosures begin   -CoyoteKen

Definition of Counterparty Risk

Counterparty risk is the likelihood or probability that one of those involved in a transaction might default on its contractual obligation. Counterparty risk can exist in credit, investment, and trading transactions.    -Source

I had forgotten about counterparty risk.

If the Marxists are in power, expect them to nationalize pension plans to "protect" older people.

I wonder if that is part of their game plan. I have a couple of brothers-in-law who worked for Delphi, an automotive supplier. Delphi pre-emptively went bankrupt which triggered a clause forcing General Motors to absorb all of their hourly-worker's pension and retiree healthcare obligations.

It was a dirty piece of work. The CEO pulled the trigger on the bankruptcy filing based on the fiction that IF all obligations were called in at the same time and no bridge credit was available and if Delphi was unable to sell bonds, then they would be unable to pay all of the obligations.

The hourly-workers were "made whole" in the bankruptcy (in part because they were backstopped by pro-forma language General Motors had included in the spin-off) while salary workers had their promises of pensions vaporized. One of my B-I-Ls had worked for GM/Delphi for forty years and has ZERO for his pension.

People who have been crapped-on tend to be fertile ground for Marxists promises.

Is it possible the Marxist True-Believers are engineering a pension train-wreck to eliminate the inherent resistance mature citizens feel toward Communism?

Clearly, a pension train-wreck is in the tea-leaves. Certainly on the public pension side and quite likely on much of the private side as well. But like the azz-hat who choreographed the Delphi bankruptcy to serve his own ends, are the Marxists crafting it to be spectacularly cataclysmic and excruciatingly painful to punish their enemies and to persuade the naive.

This has been a weird "recession"

 

Weekly, aggregate pay-rolls

Economists define recessions as two quarters-in-a-row where key metrics decline.

The problem with that definition is that a minimum of six months (two quarters is half a year) must pass before a hiccup is officially declared a recession. EVERYBODY knows it is a recession long before it is declared.

In normal economic downturns the pain is relatively wide-spread. Many people have less discretionary money as the hours they are scheduled to work are reduced or their jobs are eliminated.

Early in the downturn most people stop spending as much on trinkets and toys.

Later in the downturn many people start bailing. They start selling some of their toys. A toy being defined as anything not required to carry you to work or sustain life.

If you are a prudent money-manager then you have a few dollars squirreled away and can help the people who need money out. No, you are not exploiting them. They NEED that money more than they want the toy.

This downturn has not seen the number of campers and ATVs and snowmobiles and trailers and lifted trucks parked by the road with For Sale signs in them that other downturns had.

Where did the pain go?

Well, one sector that is absolutely monkey-hammered are owners of rental property. There is a moratorium on evicting tenants who choose to not pay rent. The property owner is still on-the-hook to pay property taxes, maintenance, debt service and even utilities if they are rolled into the rent.

The market for rental properties has been eviscerated. One wonders if it was a plan. Will Feinstein and Pelosi and and the other billionaires in government scoop up thousands of prime properties for pennies on the dollar?

This is a classic Big Government power-play. Buy positions in some obscure industry like solar or ethanol and then write legislation that forces the public to buy the products (or sell them dirt cheap).

Conservatives hate that because it introduces massive distortions in the market and destroys consumers' ability to choose.

The final joke may be on them. Mom had a neighbor who cashed out and moved to San Francisco a year ago to open a bed-and-breakfast. Rotten timing.

Even if buyers materialize to buy properties from distressed sellers in NYC, San Fran and other formerly-trendy cities there is no guarantee that they will regain their trendy status as corporations are forced to recognize the reality of telecommuting.

For the football fans in Ohio

 The MSU Spartans beat the Fat Weasels 27-24. The game was played in Ann Arbor.